


Live Well and Love

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bearded Dwarf Women, Dwarf Courting, Dwarf Culture, Dwarf Customs, Erebor, F/M, Gen, Pre-Smaug, Romantic Comedy, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:04:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 50
Words: 187,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most Dwarves never marry. That can be attributed to any number of factors, from uneven gender ratios to love of craft trumping love of romance.</p><p>A trip to visit family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no profit from this story. Title comes from the Eleventh Doctor's farewell speech to Amy Pond in "The Big Bang." 
> 
> Yep, it's the Fundin/Halldóra Rom Com I've been threatening to write ever since Freya and Thráin got too angsty for their own goods. This story is going to be awash with headcanon, f-ed up timelines, minor deviations from Tolkien's original intent with regards to dwarf culture and tons of OCs. If you haven't already closed your browser window, I can also promise schmoopy dwarves in love, dwarves being untalented matchmakers, dwarf friendships, dwarf family relationships (both family love and family dysfunction) and bonus crafting! If you _still_ haven't closed your browser window sit back, scroll down, and enjoy!

To the vast majority of dwarrow-kind, their craft was their greatest love. The first of their race were born of their Maker’s love for His work and His desire to pass His knowledge on. All day long the halls of Erebor bustled with life and activity as the smiths, bookbinders, weavers, fletchers, farriers, butchers, bakers, chandlers, hunters, jewelers, brewers and all the great teeming mass that gave life to the grand city went about their days and nights to the background hum of the miners below their feet freeing the earth’s bounty from the rock. When their work was done they congregated in the halls among their friends and family to talk, drink, fight and make merry together. When the torches burned low and the moon rose over the Lonely Mountain they returned to their homes and apartments to rest and begin the day anew on the morrow.

Yet some dwarves, young and newly released from their indentures, harbored a secret in their innermost hearts. They would never claim they were unhappy with their work, quite the contrary, they found it fulfilling and satisfying...most of the time. As they carefully glued leaves, thin and fragile as a moth’s wing back into the bindings of ancient books of lore or else stood by in court where their only task as a member of the Guard was to hold their spear aloft and look menacing they found their minds drifting from the task at hand. In their daydreams they wondered if there was not, perhaps, something more to look forward to when the day’s work was ended.

This is the story of two such dwarves.

* * *

It was because she lived with her brother, Halldóra concluded, coming home to empty rooms after supper. Haldr worked long hours, even by the standards of their race. Because he was up to his eyeballs in subordinates, apprentices and inquiries from scribes, scholars and other denizens of the city under the Mountain all day long, he preferred to spend his evenings in silence with his pipe clamped firmly between his teeth.

After a particularly draining day, followed around and pestered endlessly by visiting scholars of the Ironfist clan, Haldr reacted very badly to his sister’s inquiry about a translation of the Second Age poet Fraeg Silvertongue.

 _I’ve been answering foolish questions all day,_ he snapped at her. _I haven’t the patience to answer any more._

It was ten years ago that he said that and he apologized immediately afterward for being so short with her, but ever since then Halldóra tried to avoid talking overmuch to her brother when he was resting after work. Most nights they either read or smoked in silence, if he was in a very good mood she might play upon her fiddle in the evenings, but Haldr would rather have quiet most of the time.

Really, the solitude wouldn’t be such a damper on her spirits, Halldora reflected as she shed her coat and boots, padding back downstairs to the sitting room more comfortably dressed in her tunic, trousers and socks, if she had more friends.

“Ugh, what are those thoughts, Mistress Melancholy?” she grimaced and asked aloud - just as Haldr preferred tomb-like quiet, she found silence somewhat unnerving. Her fiddle and bowstring were lying in their usual place and she rosined the bow with more vigor than was called for. “It’s a wonder you have any friends at all, you sour thing.”

For Halldóra did have companions to boast of, only they were...not exactly typical acquaintances for a dwarf of her tender years. Which was to say that they were not exactly dwarves of tender years themselves. Which was to say, bluntly, in the privacy of her own thoughts, that they were _old_. Well into their second century upon this earth while she had not yet seen the rise and fall of eighty-five summers.

Which was _not_ to say that she was at all resentful, far from it, their intelligence, wit and wisdom was a whetstone for her mind and the buzz of chatter around the court and the lively arguments when the scribes got to debating over a legal particular was positively invigorating, but then the day’s work would be done and they would return home to their families or to their peers in both craft and age and Halldora returned home to silence.

In the dining hall she would often eat with the apprentices. They were a friendly lot and nearer her own age, but there was only so much she could contribute to the conversation, being that she had completed her education while many of them still struggled with perfecting their Sindarin. They quietly (and not so quietly) complained about the masters who were her colleagues, which could make for a very uncomfortable meal indeed. This night she had not troubled herself; instead she ate alone, with a book propped up against a keg of ale on the end of the table, just so she wouldn’t look completely pitiful.

The fiddle helped; it cut the silence and was balm enough for her upset - until the door to the sitting room slammed open and Haldr stomped past. Without a word of greeting, Halldora stopped playing and retrieved a book to pass the time until she went to bed.

 _That was nice while it lasted,_ she noted ruefully. A pipe fell into her line of vision, packed and already smoking. She smiled up at Haldr and tried to make the expression seem cheerful. Haldr wasn’t unkind, beneath his peevishness and his temper. Anyway, she had her books and so had company of a sort, all made of ink and vellum, bound in leather.

And yet, she reflected as she blew smoke away from the pages, there was something to be said for flesh and blood companions.

* * *

It was because he lived alone, Fundin decided. He had only the servants to thank for the fire that greeted him in the evenings when he returned home from a day on the training fields, in the forges or at court. The suite of apartments his family occupied in his youth were far too large for a single dwarf - even a dwarf who took up a great deal of space, as he did. It was alright when he was young, after his parents’ died and he lived with his brother and sister, but Gróin married and decided that he and Maeva would live closer to the hustle and bustle of the city to be nearer their fellow healers. By the time Dísa had married Thrór he was living among his fellow novice members of the guard, but now he was too old and too well trained to live in the warrior’s dormitories and, after all, their rooms had lain vacant for so many years, it seemed a shame to abandon them.

So a little more than a year ago, he’d come home. To an empty house.

Sure, he could pass time carousing with the lads until daybreak, but they had to sleep sometime. So they would return to their shared quarters and he’d hie away to his childhood home. Melancholy suited Fundin ill, the lethargy that came of having nothing to do and no one to speak to made him antsy, but he didn’t push aside the furniture and train alone until he exhausted himself enough for slumber. Not anymore.

The first time he did that, he accidentally ruined one of the tapestries with his axeblade which sliced through the centuries-old threads like a knife through butter. Gróin was much handier with a needle than he was and sewed it back up, but Fundin could still see the place where he’d torn the arras, like a scar. The only bright side of that day was that he enjoyed his brother’s company for a few hours, even if he had to listen to his grumbling about how he was a ‘clumsy little dwarfling with more beard than sense.’

Then Gróin went home to Maeva and Óin, leaving Fundin by himself in those big, drafty rooms.

Truly, it shouldn’t matter a fig to him. He was a grown dwarf for Durin’s sake! (“Rather _too_ grown,” Gróin complained more than once after his brother got taller than him, but he was teasing and smiling all the same.) It certainly shouldn’t trouble him to go without the presence of his brother and sister or comrades in arms for an hour or two before bed. Yet he was jittery and unsettled all the same.

Blowing out a sigh, Fundin abandoned his cloak and coat upon the lounge by the fire - what should he care if he cluttered the place? No one was coming to visit. His weapons he took rather more care with carefully hanging and placing them within their proper place in the weapons cabinet. Which he didn’t bother locking because there were no dwarflings about who might lose a finger playing with his knives. Even when his nephew Thráin had been young enough that it was a concern, he had enough head about him not to touch things he had no business playing with.

Dísa said he had more sense than her and Thrór put together. Fundin joked that his nephew might be a changeling. He got a hard kick in the shin from Thráin for that. His sister just laughed.

The room he slept in now was hers. Even after all these years, his parents’ room seemed like a sacred place, somewhere he was not permitted to enter without permission. The bed in the nursery was far too small for him, but his sister’s old room suited him well. None of her things were there, every last arrowhead and hair bead went with her when she moved into the royal suite set aside for the king and queen. When she visited him shortly after he moved back in and saw where he was sleeping, she clucked her tongue and shook her head. Thrór, it turned out, hadn’t used his parents’ bedchamber either after his father died. Not until after their marriage.

He probably wasn’t destined for marriage, Fundin reflected as he got into bed. It was unusual enough that two siblings out of three would choose marriage, for all three children of one house to wed was all but unheard of. He was young yet, but there had been no lass who caught his eye in the forges or on the training grounds. The few girls who trained with the Guard were respectably wedded to their craft.

Anyway, who would he court, if he did get it in his mind to wed? Someone sweet and kind like Maeva? She was a good balance for his tempestuous brother, Fundin supposed, but he’d rather someone with a bit more fire in her belly.

 _Not_ like Dísa, he chuckled to himself in the dark at the notion. He had one of her in his life and didn’t need another dwarrowdam with arms like steel and all the ferocity of a warg who’d scented blood. There probably wasn’t another like his sister the world over, he thought with no small measure of pride.

There was an old saying that dictated if a dwarf was to find himself a wife, he’d choose a woman most like his mother. Fundin did not think it likely - he did not remember her well and so could hardly say whether or not he knew anyone who was at all like her. She was brave. And bold. And a skilled Healer. She loved her children. But not as much as she loved their father.

Before he settled in for bed, he retrieved a large fox fur blanket from the clothes press and burrowed under it as he drifted off to sleep. No matter how hot the fire burned in the evenings, the place always seemed cold.


	2. Courtship, Chapter One

When Halldóra arrived in the scriptorium, she found Sága already hard at work, lecturing to a group of fifteen sleepy fifth year apprentices. Despite the fact that it had been many years since she needed to learn these lessons, she slowed her pace and wandered up to the rear of the group. It wasn’t difficult for her to blend in among the forty-five year old younglings; though most of them were only half grown, many were taller than she was and provided rather an excellent shield.

“The lives of Men, Elves and Dwarves run different courses,” she explained in her deep, smooth tones. Sága was well into her third century of life, but her nut-brown skin showed only the faintest trace of wrinkles upon her brow and around her eyes. Her lovely silver hair and beard were gathered back in golden clasps and from the breast of her coat dangled a gilded monocle, hanging from a chain of real pearls.

Rather than appearing to be the wizened grandmother giving lessons to a group of disobedient schoolchildren, she seemed as regal as the Queen Under the Mountain herself and her pupils sat before her straight-backed, heads lifted in rapt attention.

“As reflected in our language. Eyja raised an excellent point yesterday eve that I meant to address today. The languages of Men change so quickly because their lives are so brief, they are inconstant and ofttimes irrational - a metaphor for Men themselves, perhaps.”

The apprentices tittered among themselves, scratching notes dutifully into notebooks that, Halldóra knew from experience, they bound themselves earlier in the year.

One of the dwarrow-lads in the rear raised his hand and Sága nodded her head encouragingly at him. “Taf?”

“How do Men accomplish anything?” he asked, looking utterly perplexed. “Seeing as how their languages vary so much in different places and betwixt grandsires and their heirs? If three-hundred year old speech is archaic - ”

“Three-hundred year old grandsires don’t have cause to speak to their heirs,” a brown-haired lass interrupted him with an expression of irritating superiority that Halldóra was well acquainted with, having worn it often in her youth until Sága herself told her it put people off. “They being long since returned to the earth.”

The apprentices laughed at that and Taf seemed chagrined, smiling and nodding along with his fellows, but Sága raised a hand to halt their merriment.

“There’s something there,” she allowed and the apprentices quieted down to listen. “Talk between grandsires and their heirs can become _extremely_ muddled for Men - and Dwarves, you won’t find me arguing that fact. But Dwarves have the advantage of looking to their elders more easily than Men, who view hundred-year-old conflicts as ancient history rather than happenings of the near past. They’re...forgetful, in a way our race is not. It makes them short-sighted.”

“And Elves are long-sighted?” Taf supplied, eager to make one good impression on his Master that day.

“ _Very_ long sighted,” Sága nodded with something like a sigh. “So long-sighted they can’t see what’s right in front of their noses - don’t write that down, I shouldn’t like to be quoted saying such.”

“What does that make us, then?” the brown-haired girl asked, her look of confidence fading slightly.

Sága smiled a little mysteriously. “Though mortal, we have the benefit of long lives and - if I tutor you well - excellent record keeping. To know one’s history is to better understand the present and lay the groundwork for what is to come. Some will call us short-sighted, and they might be right in that, but we are not so blind that we miss very much. Even an interloper in our midst. Good morning, Halldóra.”

Found out at last, the young dwarrowdam managed an ironic wave and backed away, but Sága rose and stopped her retreat with a wave of her hand. “I would speak to you, my dear, if you’ve time to spare.”

“Of course,” Halldóra nodded, smiling at the apprentices who inclined their heads respectfully and murmured, _Good morrow, Master_ as she passed.

Whenever she was greeted as such, she had to fight the urge to turn around and see what illustrious scribe had come in behind her. She very much felt she was the apprentice again when Sága led her into her office and shut the door against prying eyes and ears.

“You’re aware of the contract dispute between some of our stonemasons and one of the Grand Sovereigns of Dale?” she asked without preamble.

“Aye,” Halldóra nodded, winding a braid around her finger. The city had been all a-buzz with the details for some weeks, you could hardly linger over a stall in the market without overhearing or participating yourself in a conversation about it.

One of the high-ranking citizens, a sovereign of the High Council which drafted and the laws enforced by the Lord of the city had commissioned a watchtower to be built along the river, carved with scenes depicting his family’s history. All very well and good, but when the contractors surveyed the building site they found the soil too sandy to provide a good foundation and refused to take the work unless a more suitable place was agreed upon for the monument. The gentleman who commissioned the tower refused, construction was never begun and he was now suing for breach of contract.

“It’s been idling in the lower courts for the longest time,” she continued. “Is it still ongoing?”

“Aye, only now, winter coming fast upon our heels, they want it settled as soon as possible and so are taking the matter to the King himself.” In contrast to her stately bearing before the apprentices, Sága now bustled busily about her office, taking up several quills, two scrolls of unmarked parchment and two pots of ink. All of these she deposited in Halldóra’s arms, which came up automatically to receive them.

“Can’t Rekr fetch his own quills?” she asked, looking down at the bundle in her arms, puzzled. “Whatever happened to that group of tenth-years he keeps on rotation to refill his ink bottles and make his tea and tuck him into bed nights?”

Rekr had been the chief scribe under the Mountain for going on fifteen years now and was such a blowhard that Halldóra could not summon up the appropriate level of respect for him when she was out of his immediate presence. Once he _snapped_ at her in the library with his fingers, insisting that she fetch a book for him like a raven he hired to deliver a letter. She would have thrown it at him, had she possessed less regard for the book itself.

Sága didn’t much like him either, but she usually managed to scold Halldóra mildly for speaking so irreverently about her elders. That day, things were different. The elder scribe’s mouth thinned to a line and she said briskly, “Rekr has lately requested a leave of absence. To remove himself East for a time.”

“And it was granted?” Halldóra asked, blinking owlishly at Sága in surprise. The displeased look on her mentor’s face only deepened.

“He is confident that it will be. So confident that he packed his saddlebags and departed with the season’s last caravan bound for the Iron Hills.”

The younger dwarf’s mouth dropped open in shock. “And so left the court without a scribe?” she asked, agog. “Sága, you’re joking!”

“Oh, aye, and a very merry jest it is too, see how it cheers me,” she grumbled, looking as vexed as Halldóra had ever seen her. Recollecting herself she continued, with less choler, “Rekr has left, but the court is not without a scribe.”

“Of course,” Halldóra nodded, thinking of at least half a dozen scribes who were not so occupied that they could not clerk at court since the need was so pressing. The caravan left only the afternoon before, they would have had little time to prepare. If Sága wanted her to play the servant and set out their writing instruments, it was no trouble, though she found it odd that none of the apprentices could be spared.

Sága smiled at her, warmly. “You’ll do very well,” she nodded, patting Halldóra upon the shoulder and leading her to the doorway.

Halldóra dug her heels in before they’d quite reached the threshold. “What? _Me?_ ” she squeaked, whirling around and nearly shattering the ink bottle on the floor. It fell from her arms, but she caught it balanced upon the toe of her boot.

“Naturally,” Sága bent and replaced the little jar securely within the armful of supplies. “Let’s not pretend modesty, you’ve wanted to be court scribe since you were fifty.”

“Aye,” Halldóra nodded, but kept her boots so firmly planted on the ground that she might have been rooted there. “But...thirty years hence. When Rekr got so weary of not always being the most important person in his room that he walked.”

“Well, his weariness set in a bit early,” Sága replied. “Come, it isn’t every day a scribe comes along who can render script in the Sôval Phârë and Angerthas Erebor at the same time.”

“I can name seven within shouting distance. Including _you_ ,” she countered, slightly desperate.

“But none of the seven are half so quick at the task as you. And you know I haven’t the patience for court.” With a significant look at the huge clock that dominated one wall and ticked the seconds down in a downright _menacing_ manner, Sága gave her protegee another shove toward the door, using enough force that the younger dwarf stumbled forward a few steps. “Be off with you. You’ll be late.”

Halldóra felt slightly backed into a corner, but she supposed she could still refuse. And by ‘refuse,’ naturally she would drop everything she was holding and run for the door at full speed as if she was being chased by a particularly vicious wolf pack, but it wouldn’t do. On the one hand, she _had_ completed her training and there was no real argument to be made against her skill. On the other...well, she was nervous. Who wouldn’t be, when asked to render an account of a trial so important it got the attention of the King Under the Mountain?

Wearing a smile that she obviously meant to be reassuring, Sága added, “I have every faith in you.”

The sound that emerged from Halldóra’s mouth was too high-pitched to be called a groan and not drawn-out enough to be called a scream. It was something in-between that made all the apprentices turn their heads curiously toward her as she walked out of Sága’s office like a sleepwalker. Well, a sleeprunner. Halldóra took a deep breath, then, remembering that it was quite a distance from the scriptorium to the throne room and she took awfully short strides as it was, ran out of the place at full speed.

The cheers from the apprentices as she sprinted from the chamber made the word _conspiracy_ flash through her mind, but she couldn’t waste one jot of energy on wondering just how many of Sága’s charges knew about their Master’s plans. She was much more concerned with not tripping half the Dwarves who were ambling through the corridor. Many stepped to the side at the sound of running feet, but she breathlessly shouted, “Excuse me!” nearly a hundred times before she reached the throne room.

The room itself was built near the mouth of Erebor, it was the closest room to the front gate and had enormous glass windows carved into the rock from which natural sunlight penetrated. The inlaid gold glowed bright in the mid-morning light and King Thrór sat upon his throne of stone, crown upon his grey streaked hair, blue eyes sharp and clear under his bushy black brows. Beside him, his wife the Queen Sigdís, sat upon her own companion seat, looking like the Mountain made flesh.

Not a diminutive dwarf himself, the Queen towered over her husband. She was broad of shoulder and wide of chest with a warrior’s tattoos adorning her brow and chin. Halldóra cringed a little to see that the King and Queen were already prepared to receive the contesting parties; was she late after all? But no one stood before them, in fact, the King’s Guard was only just assembling around the periphery of the room with their spears and swords. It seemed she had just enough time to settle herself behind the tall desk upon which the court scribe wrote, removed enough that the seat did not seem to loom above those thrones occupied by the royals, but close enough to see and hear all.

The way to her perch was blocked by a figure that, at first glance, Halldóra took to be a guard of Dale, so tall was he. Standing behind him put her at eye-level with the middle of his back, armor-clad. Yet his well-formed body, stately attire and especially his thick, well-braided black hair marked him out as a dwarf through and through - albeit the largest of their kind she had ever seen. If she stood directly behind him, she was entirely obscured, with room to spare. 

“Excuse me,” she said again, modulating her pitch so that her voice would not echo in the enormous chamber. “May I pass?”

The guardsman looked down at her and Halldóra smiled reflexively - oh, but he was _handsome_ , wasn’t he? Well, the bit of his face she could see. A fine, hawk-like nose first asserted itself along with his beard, dark as his hair and just as thick.

“Ah,” he said, once he looked down and saw her standing behind him. The guard paused and stared at her for a long moment, rather longer than Halldóra thought necessary. The scrolls and quills in her arms practically screamed her purpose, but he made no inquiries before he shifted his weight and said, “Right.”

The positively enormous dwarf moved out of the way that she might walk by him unimpeded and Halldóra inclined her head graciously, keeping her eyes upraised to try and make out more of his features beneath his helm - oh, but this was no time to oggle fetching young guardsmen! After her brief hesitation she remembered she had a task to do and made her way to the desk and the stool.

It was finely carved, with cunning wells for the ink and clasps to hold the parchment in place and thoughtful places to hold quills and rest elbows - but it was only that the thing was built so damnably high. In order to reach everything, she had to curl one leg beneath her and prop herself up atop it, keeping her back ramrod straight to survey the courtroom. If any silent communication passed between the dwarves present, she must record that as well - though it would not be rendered in the documents made available for the eyes of Men.

The side door used by outsiders who had business with the King opened and in strode several representatives of the race of Men. They made their way down the long ramp leading to the throne, finely dressed and bowed low before Thrór.

The preliminary greetings were made and Halldóra took a deep breath as she positioned her quills, nibs bright with fresh ink, upon the parchment. Then Thrór asked to hear the particulars of the case and she began to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seriously intended for this to be, like two paragraphs before we actually got to hear the case, but I couldn't resist giving Sága more screen time. Next chapter is Thrór POV, which I'm very excited about (sorry, Fundin, you're going to have to wait a bit before we hear from you again). We'll get a little more insight into the Erebor/Iron Hills tensions. And, of course, the ethics of dwarrow craft clashing with the demands of Men. Yes, this is meant to be a romantic comedy. Courtroom drama is HILARIOUS! (But at least Dora and Fundin have met...sort of.)
> 
> Just a few notes, I've decided Dale is run a little like the medieval Republic of Florence with a council made up of dudes from various high-ranking families who answer to the Lord of Dale. I'm calling them Sovereigns since it's the closest I can get to the Italian Signoria. And "Sôval Phârë" is the technical Westron term for "Common Tongue," I had Sága use it because she's fancy like that.


	3. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to warn everyone that this chapter goes crazy train off the rails with my headcanon about the history of the Iron Hills. It's different from Tolkien's and will probably become A Thing later on in the story, just so you know.

The only thing more vexing to the King Under the Mountain than official meetings with representatives of the Elven race was official meetings with representatives of the race of Men. It was all very well to make conversation in the marketplace with Men or share a pint, but when it came to their conduct in court the confounded arrogance of that race wore on his last nerve.

“We had a contract,” the Sovereign, a grey-headed Man by the name of Ryce, complained. “We thought your people honored contracts.”

“We mean to fill the terms,” the master mason, Lofar, retorted. “But not upon such a foundation as that. The ground will sink, the monument will tilt, the base will crack and it will be a sorry sight to look upon two centuries hence, mark me.”

“The site remains the same, as was outlined in the contract.”

“The site is not mentioned in the contract - not _specifically_ ,” Nali, the dwarrow speaking for the defence said, his manner only slightly less combative than that of his clients. “Nowhere does it state where the tower is to be built, the only specifics given were the terms of the construction itself, they time to be taken in the building and payment for supplies and labor.”

“Which you’ve breached!” Ryce declared, going very red in the face. “You were meant to begin your work a month ago and the land sits idle!”

“As well it should!” Lofar bellowed back, giving as good as he got, even as Nali signaled to him to hold his tongue. “I would cut my beard before I would allow my work to look so poorly in years to come. It’s a poor site and I will not lend my name nor mark to any monument that stands - or sags, rather - upon that land! Would you gild dross and rank it a full twenty-four carats?”

“We aren’t talking about gold, you metal-mad dwarf!” the Sovereign shouted, at the end of his rope. “We’re talking about how you dishonest thieves seek to rob me of my due!”

“Objection!” Nali complained. “Lofar and his laborers are not seeking payment, they simply desire a change of location or they demand a release from the contract for they will be unable to fulfill the terms.”

“Un _willing_ ,” one of the Men in Ryce’s entourage chimed in. “Not unable, they’re very well able to carve and sculpt when it pleases them, but not on Men’s terms.”

“Not when their terms our an insult to our craft!” Lofar was going almost as red as Ryce. “Ours and our grandfathers’ and our ten-times great-grandfathers!”

“ _Hang_ your blasted grandfathers - ”

“Peace!” Thrór thundered and Men and Dwarves fell silent. It was all very well to let such an argument build up in the courts, but this was the throne room and the throngs of spectators were kept well away. He was meant to settle the matter, not entertain the city. “Lofar, come forward.”

The mason obediently trotted toward the throne, but there was a look of insolence upon his face and his arms, heavy with muscle, were folded defiantly across his chest. “My lord,” he scowled.

“You say the land is unsuitable,” Thrór said, bringing the fingers of one hand to his lips and them moving them away before his arms came to rest upon the arms of this throne. To the Men, he merely looked thoughtful, but Lofar knew the sign for what it was. _Bad?_

Lofar’s hands moved quickly, unfolding themselves as he lowered them to his sides, making a fluttering gesture, “Aye, my lord.” _Worse._

“You won’t find a dwarrow-craftsman worth his beard who’ll satisfy you,” Nali addressed Ryce directly. “If you want our work, you must agree to our terms.”

“ _I_ contracted _them_ ,” Ryce seemed ready to tear his hair in frustration, an action that would certainly have the Mountain abuzz for months. “I’m the one who’s to render payment, I don’t care if the whole thing collapses in sixty years!”

Even among the dwarves of court, who had seen all manner of strange customs and heard odd words from Men, there was a noted charge in the air at Ryce’s callousness, as though the entire room had made a collective gasp. All save one, Thrór noted. From the scribe’s desk there was a an exhale, a gusty sigh and he saw the top of a brown-haired head shake slightly.

Thrór’s momentary glance, his first such since the Men and masons entered the court, lingered. Rekr’s request for a leave of absence had come to his attention that morning and, at the time, he found it thoughtful that the scribe would be so courteous as to give notice several months before the spring caravans would make their scheduled journeys through the mountains. Evidently, it had not been a matter of forethought on Rekr’s part that made him submit his request so early, but cunning. If the scribe was not in his usual place, he certainly was now some miles away en route to the Iron Hills.

Thrór could have sent some Guardsman after him, he supposed, but it would likely not be worth the effort, if a replacement had been found. Good old Sága, he thought with approval, watching the way the tops of the quills - a dual wielder! - flew across the scrolls. She kept her head bowed low, he noted, since he could only see the top of her hair from his position upon his throne.

Placing his attention back on his subjects and the Men who accused them of thievery, Thór took a breath and said, calmly, “So, this is your impasse, eh? Lofar and his laborers will not build upon sandy soil and Grand Sovereign Ryce will not consent to choose another building site.”

“Aye, my lord,” Nali replied, nodding gravely.

“Very well,” Thrór said. “You are dismissed. Come back tomorrow at this time and you shall know my judgment.”

“Very good, my lord,” Nali bowed low, and the other dwarves followed suit. The Men did the same, but Ryce wore an expression of bitter resentment and Thrór heard him mutter on the way out about, ‘another day’s delay, do these dwarves think I have a century to wait?’

This time, the noise that came from the scribe’s perch was less a sigh and more a chortle. Nay, for it was too high-pitched to be described as such. A giggle, perhaps. Or a titter. Thrór looked up again and saw the scribe raise her head - and he was very much surprised to see that she was not bent as low over her writing as he supposed. A smooth forehead lead the way to narrowed dark eyes and the top of a nose, but the rest of the face was obscured by the edge of the writing desk.

She felt Thrór’s eyes on her and for a second, startled brown met incredulous blue. The little scribe ducked her head again, but Thrór beckoned her down from her perch with a wave of his hand.

“I do not believe we have been properly introduced,” he said as she - by the Maker’s celestial forges, he did not believe his son stood taller than this girl - scurried forward to stand before him, bending so low when she bowed that he was sure he could have used her for a footstool.

“Erm, I’m new,” she said apologetically, fidgeting on the spot, the toe of one boot tapping on the floor. The lass spoke very quickly in a high, sweet voice that got higher the longer she talked. “That is, I’m - well, it was all very last minute, you see, sir, Master Sága only learnt of Rekr’s...er... _holiday_ this morning and she has a whole gaggle of apprentices underfoot, she could hardly come herself.”

“So she sent a forty-year-old in her stead?” he asked, trying to keep the incredulity from his voice. Sága was devoted to her craft and he’d always found her of sound mind, but the young lady was such a wee slip of a thing that she hardly looked old enough to be apprenticing, let alone recording the goings-on of the kingdom.

The girl drew herself up to her full, unimpressive height. Not quite a dwarfling, her beard was grown in and she kept it braided up into her hair, presumably to keep from dragging in ink or getting caught between the pages of books. “I’m eighty-two,” she replied indignantly. Then paused and added, “Next midsummer eve.”

Eighty-one? Well, that was hardly better than forty. Most scribes were hardly out of the scriptorium before they were in their nineties, at least. Had all the scribes mysteriously sickened and died leaving after Rekr left, leaving only this girl to take up their quills? If such a catastrophe had occurred, Thrór rather thought it was something he ought to have been informed of.

Thrór exchanged a quick glance with his wife. Sigdís understood the look on his face in an instant, the furrowed brow and inquisitive tilt to his head was an expression which silently queried, _Have I completely lost control of my court?_

Her answering smirk replied, _Could be, but you’ll get through it. In the meantime, I find this all very funny._

“Lass,” the King Under the Mountain said, trying to modulate his tone to something between stern and kindly. It wasn’t difficult, she was a wide-eyed pretty little girl, hardly the sort one spoke harshly to - but that was just it. She was a _girl_ , barely of age. And Sága placed her in one of the most important positions within the court. This case he heard, if he decided wrongly, might threaten the peace that existed between Erebor and the city of Dale. He relied upon the wisdom of his scribes to guide his judgment.

Rekr was a fusspot, a bit imperious and high-and-mighty for Thrór’s taste. He had a way of speaking that seemed to imply anyone who wasn’t _him_ was an utterly incompetent fool. He was irritating and if he had given notice that his departure was intended for springtime, Thrór would have been happen to see the back of him. He might have personally offered to pack his saddlebags for him, if it would have gotten him on the road more quickly.

Yet he had vanished, dishonorably and like a thief in the night. Since he ascended to the throne, many of his father’s courtiers had gone to the Iron Hills. The action was not new, but Rekr’s manner of leaving, so quickly and with so little regard for his station and his lord, was at a level of disregard that Thrór had not known in all his years as King.

Erebor was the prosperous city it ever was, made even moreso under his rule, but ever the officials of the court seemed to believe that Thrór was simply biding his time until the true king stepped forward to claim the throne. Kingship had been thrust upon Thrór when he was very young indeed. He was untried and unprepared, taking a vacant throne while grieving a father and a brother lost. _Unready_ , the faceless peddlers of gossip whispered. _Too tempestuous, uneducated, hotheaded, our boy King._

Not like Grór. His youngest brother went to the Iron Hills before he reached his majority and when the time came for him to rule that region, he was fully grown and well educated in matters of state. He had all the makings of an excellent king, or so said Thrór’s detractors. Even the birth of his son had done little to secure his reign in the minds of those doubters. If Thráin, his only boy, failed to produce an heir then the throne would fall to his nephew Náin - or his sister-sons, should his younger sister marry and produce an heir.

The discussions were unseemly to Thrór, almost obscene. What right did the courtiers have to speak of succession, of the babes to be born of heirs who were themselves still children? Yet the rumors flew and the eldest and wisest members of his council still requested leaves of absence to the Iron Hills that grew longer and longer until finally they resettled there.

What of loyalty? What of the much-vaunted steadfast nature of their race? Who was there in this thrice-damned mountain that he could trust?

Sigdís nudged him, a mere shifting of her arms, but he took her meaning. He must have paused longer than he realized after he addressed the girl.

“I’m sure you’re very competent,” he said at last and felt himself cringe a little when he saw her bright young face fall slightly. “And will be a great Master one day, when you’ve fifty years of apprenticing under your - ”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” she interrupted him, cheeks going a bit pink at her bold address. “But I do have fifty years of apprenticing under my belt - I’m sure you meant to say belt, I think that was the idiom you were...before I...erm. Never mind. Apologies, my lord.”

“Accepted,” he replied automatically, looking her over skeptically. “Fifty years, you say? But that would have made you all of thirty-one when you entered the scriptorium.”

All heads swiveled to the young lady who was fiddling with the quill in her hand, twirling it back and forth with her fingers, then piercing the end of a braid with it, letting the quill remain there like a feathery white ornament

“Thirty,” she admitted after she’d stopped the nervous fluttering of her hands. “To the library first, then the scriptorium, aye. My initial schooling was done with rather quickly.”

She addressed him as ‘lord,’ but Thrór was quite certain that there was nothing at all lordly in the way his mouth hung open as he goggled at the girl. “Are you some sort of...prodigy, then?” he asked, blinking at her as though he’d never seen the like before.

“If you like,” she shrugged and smiled a touch awkwardly. “I’m just good with...words.” As it to prove it she began to rattle off a great many of them. “There are others, of course, who could serve you. Older than me only, well, say Bragi, for instance, isn’t as well-versed in the Black Speech. I mean to say, he’s fine, really, perfectly well done only because he’s a bit of a traditionalist he’ll render it in the pure form, which isn’t exactly what the Orcs who will encounter your warriors will be using. Orcs have a tendency to debase any language they come across and the same goes for the speech of Mordor - which you wouldn’t think _could_ be debased, but there you are - ”

“What’s your name, lassie?” Thrór asked, giving her an appraising look. He prided himself on his ability to match names and faces to his subjects, but he did have a tendency to lose track of those who apprenticed in places other than the Guard and the forges. And if this girl had been locked away in the vaults since she was a wee mite of thirty, it was little wonder he couldn’t quite place her.

“Halldóra, sir, sorry, I ought to have - erm. Well. Daughter of - ”

“Hallthór and Dómarra,” Thrór finished for her feeling that, if she got to interrupt him, then turnabout was fair play. “Your father died bravely.”

“Thank you, sir,” she bowed her head in acknowledgment. “It’s said he crippled the drake’s wings ere he fell.”

“So he did,” the Queen nodded briskly. Sigdís kept her tongue in her mouth at court, she was all thumbs at politics, but when matters of warfare were spoken of, she felt more in her element. “It was a great aid to us, taken at great peril. A worthy sacrifice.”

“Thank you, madam,” she bowed again, hands folded in front of her to keep from wringing them fretfully.

“Your mother resides in the Iron Hills these days,” Thrór said, fixing Halldóra with a look of intense scrutiny. Her knuckles stood out white where her fingers locked together, but she did not cringe. “Your brother, I know, chose to remain behind, but I thought her daughter would have left with her.”

“I did not, my lord,” she said, tilting her chin up and looking him directly in the eye. “I too preferred to stay. If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, one doesn’t become court scribe by changing courts every decade.”

At last Thrór felt inclined to smile. So she was ambitious, this wee genius who stood before him, with a quill in her hair, placed by restless fingers. Let her prove her mettle, then. “Well, court scribe,” he said, watching her turn ruby-red at the formality. “What do you make of this?”

For a moment, her eyes darted about her as if she thought he wanted her to comment on the design of the throne room. “Make of the case, my lord?”

“Aye, the case, if you please.”

Halldóra took a breath and shrugged, glancing over her shoulder where the Men and Dwarves had stood though both parties were long gone. “It’s a tricky matter, being as how they can’t see eye-to-eye.”

Sigdís snorted and remarked wryly, “Men and Dwarves rarely do, my girl.”

“Just so, my lady.” Halldóra inclined her head toward her queen. For a moment, she looked as if she wanted to add something cheeky to her response, but bit her tongue and thought better of it. Pity. Thrór could use a bit of cheek after all that shouting. “Ah - but, it’s a matter of legacy, I think. And Dwarves and Men rank such things differently.”

“Men enjoy their legacies,” Thrór pointed out. “I know the lay of Dale and why Ryce is so stubborn about the placement of that monument and why he doesn’t mind about the sandy soil. It’ll be the first thing the boats see when coming into the harbor, his family’s history writ in stone. Before they greet the Lord himself, Ryce and his kin will have received their first notice. But in a century the stone will crack and given another few decades, fall into the river.”

“Aye, so it will,” the girl acknowledged. “But Ryce is old, my lord. Into his fiftieth year, and...he is not likely to live to see the stone crack, nor the foundation sink. I think his haste about the matter is due to his desire to see the work completed. Then he will die secure in his family’s continued glory - his sons and grandsons will also go to their graves under the shadow of that monument. For a Man it’s a fair legacy - for a Dwarf it’s shoddy craftsmanship. I cannot say I like the notion of our people’s craft being used to benefit the glory of Men while diminishing our own.”

Thrór nodded slowly, considering the girl’s words. She was of tender years, but his own thoughts had been running much along the same course. Glancing up at his wife, he saw the corner of Sigdís mouth turn upward into a little smirk. Ah, excellent; she liked her too.

Halldóra continued, her voice taking on that quick-paced, excited quality once again, “But it would not be wise, perhaps, to show such open favor. If Grand Sovereign Ryce could be persuaded to have the tower moved, to a place no less grand for him, but more suitable for building, it would be an easier decision, but he seemed resolute - but also impatient. I believe...only knowing the case from the transcripts, sir, and from what I saw today, that he would be easier to persuade to change his mind than Lothar.”

Thrór stroked his mustache thoughtfully. That was true. Dwarves had a reputation for stubbornness for a reason, but in this matter his sympathies were entirely with Lothar. They had a covenant with their Maker, their work should be fine, it should honor the earth and be a tribute to the skill with which they were given. To build a tower that would not see the rise and fall of two centuries was an insult to their craft and no true Dwarf would agree to such a thing for all the gold the world over. They would not debase themselves on the whims of Men, but a Man might let his mind be changed if his pride were satisfied in doing so.

“Were other sites brought up in the lower courts?” he asked.

Halldóra nodded eagerly. “Aye, but I can’t remember exactly where they were, that portion of the transcript was a little muddled, members of both parties were speaking at once.”

“Find them again and bring them to me,” Thrór ordered her. “We’ll see if Ryce can be persuaded to change his mind. If so...well, I might have to reconsider your suitability as court scribe.”

“Right away, my lord, thank you, my lord,” she turned on her heel and made to run from the throne room, but skidded to a halt on the stone and looked over her shoulder sheepishly at Thrór. “Am I dismissed, sir?”

There was no mistaking the grin that spread beneath Thrór’s beard now. “Dismissed,” he said, shooing her away. “Off you go! If you have ‘em to me by noon, I’ll be like to give you a silver for being so timely.”

The girl grinned back at him, all teeth and gums, before she and ran off. The quill she’d placed in her hair was loosened by her haste and it flew out behind her, landing gently upon the stone. Thrór dismissed the Guard from the throne room and declared that they should resume their usual posts. As they filed out, he looked at Sigdís and hitched his shoulders in a half shrug.

“Thought I might as well give her a chance, eh?” he replied to her unasked question, descending from the throne as he spoke. “If she botches it utterly and I insult all of Dale with my judgment, we’ll only starve this winter.”

His wife rolled her eyes, but she was grinning nevertheless. “Next winter,” she reminded him. “You’ve put your seal on this year’s trade agreement. If the Lord of Dale refuses to give over our due of grain and suchlike, we’ll storm the city and take it by force.”

Thrór reached out and patted her arm fondly. “You always did have a light touch,” he teased, then paused when he noticed one of the Guard had not followed his fellows. Fundin, instead, was bent over, twirling the quill the girl had dropped in his gloved fingers, before pocketing it. Thrór cleared his throat and the lad jumped a mile.

“Look lively!” he said. “Go on, off with you, don’t make me order you to suffer fifty lashes for neglect of duty.”

Ordinarily Fundin would have smirked at him in a manner very like his sister's and countered with some joking remark. They were alone in the hall now, there were none about to object to such behavior, but he did none of that. Only stiffened and replied, “Aye, sir,” with as low a bow as his armor allowed him to make before he hurried off, clanking loudly as he jogged to catch up with his fellows.

“Anything the matter with your brother?” Thrór asked Sigdís, raising an eyebrow. “He’s lost all his humor.”

She shook her head, frowning. “Haven’t the foggiest,” she replied. “Now you mention it, he has been a bit low lately. Living alone mightn’t be good for him. I’ll drop in on him tonight, keep him company.”

“Aye,” Thrór nodded. “You do that. I’ll be no fun at all, reading trial transcripts ‘til all hours.”

“Falling _asleep_ over transcripts, you mean.”

“If I do it’ll be your task as Queen Under the Mountain to rouse me when you get in.”

“That’s what you keep me around for, is it?" she asked, folding her arms and pursing her lips to hide a smile. "To wake you up?”

“What can I say?” Thrór asked, snaking an arm around his wife’s waist as one of her settled heavily over his shoulders. “You enliven me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awkward Halldóra is awkward! Big surprise there! But at least she made a good first impression. Or at least an interesting first impression. Luckily, Thrór and Sigdís are the kinds of people who value 'weird and interesting' over 'proper and boring.'


	4. Chapter Three

It was not a true dwarf supper without some measure of chaos. Even in the dining hall reserved for the highest-ranking members of the royal court, ale sloshed into beards, meat was taken with the hands and more than one potato was thrown, piping hot and burst its skin, staining a nobleman's doublet. The room was full of the sound of loud conversation, tankards slamming against tabletops, the occasional shout of laughter or song and the stomp of boots on the floor as the food was laid out and taken away again by a tireless serving staff. All were quite caught up in the cheerful atmosphere, save one member of the King's Guard who sat almost unmoving, his food untouched.

“You heard someone’s planning an assassination at dinner?” Loni asked, bemusedly, glancing over his shoulder. Fundin had been staring at the row of tables where the scribes usually took their meals with such singular intention that the young guardsman could think of no other explanation for his attention. “I take it they’ll be using poisoned pens?”

There was a brief smattering of laughter from guardsmen whose mouths weren’t full, but Fundin barely blinked. Loni kicked him hard under the table. “Sorry, what?” he asked, suddenly recalling that he was not alone in the room and he had a nearly untouched supper in front of him. 

“Got summat to fear from the scribes?” Loni repeating, smirking at him. “Only you’ve been staring at them all night, like there was something to be seen.”

That was just the problem. There was something to be seen - or rather, some _one_ and she was almost entirely hidden. Fundin kept a sharp eye out for Miss Halldóra since he entered the dining hall. Victory was short-lived, she arrived minutes after he did, but sat down at the end of a long table and was immediately obscured by two Masters who took the place to her left. 

Even when Fundin made one not entirely necessary trip past her to refill his mug, he was not rewarded with a view of her face, for she was shielded by a book she held in her left hand as she took her meal with her right. 

Fundin was sure that if he just got one more good look at her face, it would settle the matter. The matter being whether or not that particular dwarrowdam had been crafted by the Maker’s own hand and set down beneath the earth solely to suit Fundin’s own fancy. It could not be; what were the odds of that? Anyway, he had not done anything in his life worthy of such favor and so he was sure that it had been a trick of the light, the angle at which she tilted her chin up to meet his eyes that made her look so lovely. 

Small she was, he noticed that right away, but though her shoulders were narrow and her waist trim beneath her coat, he would never call her delicate. She had a high forehead from which cascaded beautiful brown locks, dark as a cup of coffee, that fell in waves and curls where they weren’t braided away from her face. Her eyes were lighter than her hair, he remembered, flecked with chips of amber or gold. She did not favor a mustache and Fundin found it suited her better for he could see all of her mouth when she smiled. And that smile...had any creature ever had such a smile as that?

But surely she had some minor imperfection. Maybe her nose was smaller than he remembered, or more slender. Maybe her voice was not as high and sweet as a nightingale’s song, but had a grating quality. Maybe her ears were pointed. Because she could not be as beautiful as he remembered, no one could be - it would hardly be fair to the rest of the world. 

Apart from that initial glance, Fundin was treated only to a view of the back of her head after Thrór summoned her to stand before him. Not that the back of her head did not possess its own charms, but he was itching to see her face again, just to reassure himself that his first impression had been somewhat skewed. Thrór seemed unmoved by her, his sister did react as though she’d seen anything out of the ordinary - well, aside from the fact that she was _brilliant_. Eighty-one and already a Master of her trade.

 _No one_ could be that remarkable. It simply wasn’t possible. But Fate seemed determined to keep him from achieving his goal of getting a second look at her. How was he to do anything, think of anything else but her until his curiosity was satisfied? 

But Loni was staring at him expectantly and Fundin was not about to explain his predicament, he’d sound a fool. 

“I’m not looking at anything in particular,” he said, digging into his mutton which was on the verge of going cold. It wasn’t a lie for he hadn’t seen her, after all.Just the top of her head and her brow, which wasn’t anything, really.

Loni seemed skeptical and craned his neck, trying to follow Fundin’s former line of vision. “Hmm. There’s Vitr, I don’t think he’s the type to go gold-mad and have a go at Thrór. Glóa’s expecting, that’ll throw her balance off, I _think_ you could take her, but then again - ”

“Drop it, will you?” Fundin requested, unusually surly. Which, of course, only prompted Loni to continue his perusal of the scribes, loudly describing those he did know and inventing preposterous names and occupations for those he did not.

“Aethelreid, aye, he’s a swift one. Master assassin, don’t let the grey beard fool you, nor the hunch. They call him the...Asp. The stinging Asp, in the West. The Stinging Asp With the Golden Eye - but that doesn’t refer to the eyes in his _head_ mind.”

He became so vexsome that Fundin left his supper half-finished and made his excuses to return to his rooms early. Loni dropped the act and favored Fundin with an incredulous look, gesturing at his plate as if his friend had merely forgotten his supper was there. The advantage his height gave him made him cut his eyes sideways again, seeking the girl out and he saw her just in time to watch the book close - _Ah, now I’ll -_ but she turned away and he saw nothing of her but her hair and shoulders as she turned toward the door and was swallowed up by the dwarrows returning to their homes.

Unless he set aside all the rules of polite company and stepped on _top_ of his comrades, he’d never reach her in time. Fundin’s heart sank; was he now to spend the rest of the night contemplating that too-lovely face in his sleep?

Sleep was not soon to come. No sooner had he stepped in the doorway of his home and shucked off his outer layers than that same door opened again and he heard a put-upon sigh that he’d know anywhere.

“Untidy little dwarfling,” Gróin grumbled, picking his things up and marching with them to the laundry basket in his brother’s room without asking for permission. Thráin and Óin followed hot on his heels, delivering an obligatory, “Evening, Uncle,” before they scrambled over to the chest by the fire and settled in for what promised to be a heated game of draughts.

Dísa was last to enter and she embraced her youngest brother immediately before pulling back to look him over with a critical eye. “What’s wrong?” she asked without preamble. 

Fundin marveled, sometimes, at how direct his sister could be, even by the standards of their race. She was blunt as a mattock’s head, all the moreso when she felt truly comfortable with another. Having practically raised her brother since he was a dwarfling underfoot gave her certain rights, he supposed, but Fundin colored a little bit and rolled his shoulders nervously.

“What makes you say that?” he asked, watching his sister flop down on the couch, legs propped up carelessly against the far arm as she started sharpening an arrowhead. Idleness never suited her. 

“You’ve got a troubled look about you,” she explained simply, leaning her head over the arm at her back and looking at him upside down. Her silver-streaked black hair nearly brushed the floor as she did so. “Anything I can help with?”

As Queen Under the Mountain, there was very little his sister could not do. And, he supposed, that it was entirely within her rights to summon Miss Halldóra from her own chambers that Fundin might have a second look at her and confirm that she was crafted of the same mortal stuff they were all made of...but he immediately dismissed such a notion as deranged. 

Instead of calling for a completely unnecessary summons, he settled into a chair by his sister’s head and said, “Did you notice that - ”

But Gróin came in at that moment and swatted Dísa’s boots. “Budge up, Longshanks,” he said and his sister obliged, moving her legs out of the way just long enough for her brother to settle himself down before she replaced them over his lap. 

“Did I notice?” she prompted and Gróin shot her an irritated look.

“Notice what?” he asked, looking curiously between the two of them. 

Dísa poked him with her arrowhead, “Why Fundin’s been so cheerless of late.”

“Well, I’ve noticed _that_ he’s been cheerless,” Gróin began and Fundin leaned forward in his seat, about to retort that he most certainly had _not_ been cheerless, but his brother kept speaking, “no idea why, though.”

“I wonder that you’d notice such a thing, being so often out of sorts yourself,” Fundin grumbled, folding his arms and fixing Gróin with a look that was really more pout than glare. 

“I’m never out of sorts,” Gróin replied primly and his sister laughed until he smacked her arm. “That is to say, I wake every morning in good spirits and by the time I’m ready for the noon meal, I’ve dealt with fools of every stripe that put me out of humor.”

Óin laughed then from the floor, looking up at his father skeptically. “Ama thinks you ought to try sleeping different,” he said with a smirk he’d copied from his aunt. “Since you’re forever waking up on the wrong side of the bed.”

Gróin might have gotten up to give his son a sharp cuff, had his sister’s legs not pinned him to his seat. “Stop up your ears, little pitcher,” he said warningly and Óin obliged, flopping onto his stomach and contemplating his next move. 

Despite his distraction, Fundin felt more at ease now than he had been all day. Nay, longer than that, for the room was warmed by laughter and filled with chatter, better company than a roaring, crackling fire any day. 

“It’s stupid,” he said finally when his sister looked at him again with an expression of great expectation. the black lines of the tattoo beneath her mouth that continued down below the collar of her tunic gave the impression that she was always frowning, but Fundin could read her expressions easy as anything. “But...er...that scribe - ”

“Oh, I forgot to mention,” she diverted her attention from Fundin to Gróin. “This’ll make you laugh, the court’s got a new scribe.”

“Really? What happened to Regr?” Gróin asked, then smiled wryly. “I suppose it’s too much to hope for that he choked himself on his own bluster?”

“The name was Rekr,” Dísa corrected him. “And that may yet happen, but not within our halls. Took off on the last caravan East yestermorn. Ink was still dry on the note he left as he mounted his pony.”

Gróin’s face went from red to purple very quickly and despite his previous admonishment, neither Thráin nor Óin could pretend not to hear him. 

“That yellow-bellied, good-for-nothing, duty-shirking _ingrate_ ,” he bellowed, slamming a fist down on the arm of the couch. “What sort of slothful, forked tongued snake gives up an honored place at court in such a manner? It’s _disgraceful_ , curse his hands! And his eyes, and his ears, and his _tongue_ , a curse upon his entire household! And _that’s_ too good for ‘em! And you thought I would _laugh_?” 

Dísa’s shoulders were shaking and she let her head fall back, eyes closing blissfully. “Oh, did I say _you’d_ laugh?” she asked, chortling. “I meant me. I needed to hear someone summon up a bit of fire for him. Wouldn’t you know, Thrór and I discovered his desertion at court, we could hardly start shrieking about it and once all was said and done, he’d lost his choler - ”

“Lost his choler?” Gróin asked, disbelieving. “What, did he have one of the guardsmen ascend the platform and take notes?” Redirecting his gaze at Fundin he asked him, “Tell me you got every third word, at least?”

“One of the scribes sent someone to replace him,” Fundin replied, thinking again on that smile, too bright, too beautiful in his mind’s eye. Her own eyes could not have sparkled in the sunlight so, her skin could not have glowed like rose gold before flame. “You didn’t find anything...unusual about her, did you Dísa?”

“Unusual?” his sister repeated, rolling her eyes back to look at him. “It was a queer day all around - but apart from her being given a master’s post when she’s hardly been of age a five year, nah, she seemed ordinary enough. Why? Don’t tell me your vexed over the scribe, that’s for Thrór and myself to fret over.”

Ordinary. It confirmed what he’d thought must be the truth all along. It was a trick of the light and his own fancy that transformed an ordinary young lady into the most fantastical beauty he’d ever seen. 

“Oh,” Fundin said, nodding to himself with a sense of finality. That was that, then. 

“Why? Gróin asked, half-curious, half-suspicious. “You thought something was strange about her?”

“Strange?” Fundin asked, surprised at the near accusation. “No! No, she was...you see, I thought...well, I was in her way - the way to her seat, I mean - and she requested that I move aside and she smiled...erm...she’s got this gap between her front teeth and I...” 

He trailed off when he realized that he was rambling like a lunatic. Coughed. Then shrugged and attempted a half-smile. Gróin’s eyes narrowed, then widened and he chuckled to himself. Dísa looked between them, uncomprehending, as though they’d begun speaking a language she did not understand. 

“What?” she asked, confused. “She smiled and...”

“Ah, leave him alone,” Gróin waved a hand and rolled his eyes. “Lad seems just fine to me - _I’m_ Healer, after all, and that’s that.”

They stayed for some hours more, Fundin and Gróin settling down on the floor with the dwarflings to play the game with four players while Dísa perched upon a footstool and peered at the proceedings over Thráin’s shoulder to keep them honest. It proved a worthy distraction, but after his visitors bid him goodnight and Fundin was left alone with his thoughts, he found himself again recalling the beautiful little scribe and it was to the memory of her long, thick hair and sweet smile that he fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fundin is officially too cute. There. I said it.


	5. Chapter Four

For all her size and great height, Dísa was no easy dwarf to track down when she wasn’t at court. Gróin followed her all over the city beneath the mountain, from the archery ranges to the stables, always a step behind. ‘Oh, you’ve just missed her!’ he was told over and over again. He grew so vexed that he snapped at the stable boy that perhaps he ought to have put his harnesses to better use and _kept her there_ a while.

Whether the lad was quaking in his boots because of Gróin’s shouting or mere notion of trying to force the Queen Under the Mountain to do anything was impossible to say, for Gróin turned on his heel and stalked back to the main gate, muttering and cursing under his breath.

Being only seven years younger than his elder sister, they were practically of an age. Never, in his memory, had Dísa ever been able to stop moving. She tossed and turned in her bed at night, she _ran_ everywhere, whether she was in a hurry or not, climbed tapestries, slid down railings and used shields as sleds during wintertime if their parents or other relations took too long readying themselves to accompany her to the highest snowdrift. Some of their schoolmasters let her take lessons standing up since she squirmed so when she had to sit for hours at a time that she distracted the other dwarflings.

Once he’d exhausted all her usual haunts, Gróin concluded that there were only two possibilities that were left unexplored. Either his sister was swimming or she was climbing the mountain. Again.

As he made his way to the underground lakes, he sincerely hoped his first hunch was right because he was absolutely not donning a pair of hobnail boots and ascending the peak to find her. The steady sound of sloshing water that greeted him as he entered the glittering cavern that housed the pools beneath the rock.

They were fed by small tributaries that originated in the River Running which poured by the Front Gate. Over time, the dwarves of Erebor set gemstones in the walls around the pools so the light that poured in from the atria bounced off the water and set the caverns awash in shimmering colors. Some of the pools were heated and so were set aside as baths, but Dísa was making use of the colder water closest to the surface, swimming beneath the water, her unbound hair making her look rather like a fish with black and silver scales.

Dwarves were not natural swimmers, their heavy muscles and heavier bones made them more apt to sink than do anything else, so it was a mark of pride and athleticism to train oneself to swim for pleasure, rather than just to save oneself. Gróin never bothered; he was no merchant and would sail no ship to far-off ports for business’s sake, but Dísa and Fundin both liked to swim; she taught him patiently, after hours of sinking, coughing and one memorable near-drowning.

They’d taught him a great many things, he reflected, crouching by the end of the pool his sister was rapidly approaching, rolling up one sleeve. He and Dísa both, they were more than brother and sister to the lad since their parents’ passed and it seemed as though they’d come to one more milestone in the course of Fundin’s young life.

When Dísa was within arm’s reach, Gróin reached into the pool, grabbed a handful of her thick hair and pulled with all his might until her head and shoulders popped out of the water. She spit a mouthful of water right in his face and he mopped his sodden beard with his sleeve, fixing her with a half-hearted glare.

“Gone fishing?” she intoned, flatly.

“You’re the uncanniest fish I’ve ever seen,” he replied, sitting down at the pool’s edge and releasing her hair. “And the swiftest - I’ve been high and low looking for you, can we talk?”

“What about?” she asked, pulling herself up on her arms at the side of the pool and crawling out with a mighty heave. She was dripping wet and evidently hadn’t thought to bring a robe for she spread a towel upon the floor and sat upon it across from Gróin, looking at him expectantly. Water cascaded down her body in rivers, catching in the dark curling hair upon her chest and belly, making her ink markings stand out and glisten, as though they were freshly drawn, though Gróin knew the newest of them was at least twenty years old.

Gróin rolled his eyes and sighed grandly. “What about, she asks me,” he groaned and Dísa pursed her lips irritably. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” she retorted, wringing out her hair and flicking yet more water at him. “That’s why I asked.”

“I should have thought it’d be obvious,” he said and at that she reached into the pool and positively drenched him with a splash of cold, clean water.

Gróin growled and removed his soaking coat, tossing it aside. The impulse to attempt to wrestle her into the water was a short-lived one; he knew she would get the better of him and he’d be under quick as blinking. What advantages in strength Dísa enjoyed over him, he more than made up for in intellect. It made them a well-matched pair, but one that fought like cats and dogs even on their best days.

“S’not obvious to me,” she flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Speak plain, would you?”

“It’s about Fundin, of course,” he said finally, wondering why she should look so surprised. Nine times out of ten when he stopped her to say, ‘There’s something we need to talk about,’ that something was their younger brother. As a matter of fact, he could think of precisely three instances when the subject was _not_ Fundin. Once, when he told her he thought he’d like to court Maeva. A second when he informed her that they were to be wed. And a third when Maeva was expecting Óin.

Dísa seemed to have no more insight now than she had before her brother said Fundin’s name. “What about him?” she asked, genuinely clueless.

Gróin heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes so hard all his sister saw for a moment were the whites. “I want to talk about that matter of Fundin and that new scribe. Obviously.”

“Gróin,” Dísa said, a hint of a threat in her voice. “If you say _‘obviously’_ one more time, I’ll box your ears - what about the new damned scribe? What’s so special about her?”

“On the face of it, nothing at all,” Gróin said, noting the way his sister’s shoulders tensed; she always loathed riddles. “Except to Fundin - he’s sweet on her, haven’t you noticed? Or don’t you have eyes?”

Evidently his sister’s sharp eyes were meant only to pick out the heartbeats of deer and dragons that she might stopper them with a well-shot arrow. Dark brows came together over the bridge of her straight nose and after a gobsmacked silence she said, “He’s not - is he?”

“‘Course he is!” Gróin shouted, losing all his patience, his voice echoing in the chamber. “And before he sets his mind to courting her - ”

“Courting?” Dísa let out a sound that was half a snort and half huff of disapproval. There was no missing the way her sharp blue eyes widened, then narrowed. Feeling this was a conversation she ought to dress for, she rose and vigorously toweled off, shaking her head as she reached for her trousers. “Nonsense, he’s too young.”

“He isn’t,” Gróin protested, looking up at her under his heavy brows. He felt no need to rise from the floor; she’d be taller than him anyway, what was the point?

“He’s eighty-seven,” she pointed out, as though it was likely Gróin had forgotten their brother’s age.

“I was ninety when I was married,” he replied evenly. The look his sister gave him clearly communicated her unvoiced _you were an idiot, weren’t you?_. Like many of their race, Dísa thought the pleasures of marriage were vastly overrated compared to the satisfaction of craft and work. Unlike those who held that same opinion, she got married anyway.

Pointedly, she did _not_ inform Gróin that there was something they needed to discuss before he discovered she was to wed Thrór. Marriage, he thought, was not on the table for either of them. Dísa declared at the tender age of thirty that she would never marry; only their father took her seriously at the time, but the rest of their kith and kin accepted that reality by the time she was in seventies. Always she and Thrór had been close, but they were shieldbrothers before they were anything else, so it was assumed they would be until death found them out. Sigdís, daughter of Farin would never marry; Thrór, son of Dáin woud never marry anyone who wasn’t Dísa.

Gróin only found out they were to be wed when the official pronouncement was made. Embarrassed (and, alright, perhaps a _little_ hurt) that he, her closest family member, was informed only when the rest of the Mountain found out, he made up his mind to ask her why she would make such a gross omission, but the look in her eyes, that hard, calculating look she reserved for war or the hunt, killed the question on his tongue. He never asked about it since.

Scrubbing her hair with such vigor that Gróin was slightly worried she would pull it out in clumps, Dísa replied hotly, “Well, he’s not you.”

“He isn’t _you_ either,” Gróin said, to her back now for she’d turned away from him and was relacing the ties on her tunic. “Would you - _stop moving_ , for Durin’s sake!”

He might have asked the earth to cease its orbit or the river to stop flowing or the sun to stop burning in the sky for all the good it did him. She pulled her tunic over her head and sat down upon an obliging stone bench, but naturally, she did not comply with him completely; she bent to replace and tie her boots even as she spoke. “What’s it to you, then, if he is or isn’t? What’s it to us?”

“I, for one, want to know a good deal more about the lass than we do now,” he said, knowing that this was the least amount of activity he was likely to get out of his sister. “Don’t you think it’s strange that they’re practically of an age and he never set eyes on her before yesterday?”

“Not so strange as you seem to think,” Dísa said, reaching under the bench and retrieving her second boot. “You haven’t seen her, but mark me, she’s runty. Probably been looking over her head all these years. I knew her father, a bit anyway. Didn’t talk much at camp, always had a book on hand, I thought it odd that he’d weigh his pack down so, but it didn’t seem to trouble him. Haven’t any knowledge of the mother, she took herself off to the Iron Hills some years back. Brother’s head librarian, dour geezer, losing his hair.”

“See, it’s things like _that_ that I’m curious about,” Gróin declared, smacking the floor emphatically. “Why’d she stay behind? Shows a lack of family feeling.”

“Or she mightn’t like to travel,” Dísa replied reasonably. “Or, more likely, has to do with what she said to Thrór - keeping in mind _I’m_ the only one of two of us who’s talked to her. He asked her why she’d not gone with her mother and she said you don’t get ahead in the world switching courts on a whim. I liked that, shows the lass has sense.”

Her brother replied with a disgruntled clearing of his throat, “Or that she’s shrewd enough to give folks what they want to hear.”

Rolling her eyes at Gróin now, Dísa countered, “She’s only just gone eighty, I don’t think she’s old enough for guile.”

Gróin gave his sister a skeptical look and got up off the floor, bending to pick up his coat. He frowned when he saw that it was still damp in places. “Be that as it may,” he said, shrugging into it with all the dignity he could muster, “I’m going to look into it. Ask around, just to be sure she’s suitable. If she isn’t, I’d rather nip this in the bud.”

“ _If_ it needs nipping. Could be he just likes the look of her - she’s pretty enough, I’ll grant.”

Gróin just shook his head at her. “I think we’re past that, did you hear what he said last night?”

Dísa harumphed and tapped her foot against the stone, “I’m thinking what you heard and I heard sounded awfully different.”

“It’s because you haven’t got an ounce of romance in you,” her brother replied. “The bit about her teeth? Words of a dwarf who’s been pierced with the sword of affection.”

“Let’s hope it’s not fatal,” she said, and with that, Dísa gathered up the rest of her clothing and bundled it in her arms as she marched away from the pool, heels of her boots clacking noisily with every step.

Though a conscious exertion of will, she managed to put the entire notion of Fundin getting it in his mind to court their mysterious (well, Dísa thought the girl seemed perfectly ordinary, but both her brother were determined to make much of her) little scribe. Until she made ready to go to bed that night and Miss Halldóra was all her husband could talk about.

“You ought to have come to court today,” he said, shucking off his ornamental robes and setting to work removing the ornaments clipped into his beard. “The matter with Ryce and Lofar went off splendidly - ah, damn these things!”

“Sit,” Dísa instructed, perching cross-legged on the bed across from Thrór and nimbly untangling his beard. “No blood was shed?”

“Nah, no blood shed, nor called for neither,” he replied with great satisfaction. “It was as the little miss said, took some doing, but Ryce came round in the end once I suggested a spot for the monument they both agreed was suitable. Construction’s set to begin tomorrow, no further delays. She’s a gem that girl, the Maker must have had His own hand in Rekr quitting, couldn’t have come at a better time. Poor thing, though, can’t hardly see over the desk without craning her neck, I ought to get her a pillow to perch on or summat. Show my appreciation.”

“Maybe leave the getting of presents to my brother,” Dísa said, not looking up from her work of unbraiding Thrór’s beard. It took most of her concentrated not to pull half of it out, it got so horribly tangled in his clasps after a long day at court. “Fundin’s got his eye on her - your new scribe - or so Gróin thinks, sentimental dolt he is.”

She might have said that the miners discovered a mithril deposit and there was no doubt that Thrór would have reacted in exactly the same manner as he did upon the discovery that Fundin wanted to get himself a sweetheart. Dísa knew he would, of course. She might not be the most learned dwarf in matters of diplomacy, art or literature, but if there was one thing she knew and could read easier than any book, it was Thrór.

Thrór’s eyes lit up like blue beacons and he clapped as he crooned, “Oh, that’s _wonderful_ \- ” but his wife decided she’d had quite enough of that sort of rot and cut him off before he could begin composing an impromptu love ballad for them.

“It is what it is,” she said shortly, tugging on a braid with unnecessary roughness to shut him up. It was all in vain, of course Thrór was just as stubborn as she was when he set his mind to something and just as slow at taking a hint.

“Let’s see,” Thrór began, eyes glazed over with visions of...well, whatever the rest of society did when they took to courting. The Maker knew she hadn’t any idea how one went about such things, she stayed well away from any conversations about it and never read or listened to the romantic epics, when she could help it. “First things first, get the lad and lass some time alone together - they can hardly get to courting if all they do is glance one another in the throne room. Are there any...books as need guarding, do you know?”

“No,” Dísa scowled, leaving his beard still half-braided that she might fold her arms and glare at him. Dross-headed fools, her brother and husband.

“No books?”

“No meddling,” she replied firmly. “Stop right there, I told Gróin it wasn’t any of our business, nor yours neither - here now, I said stop it.”

“Stop what?” he asked, confused. “I haven’t done anything."

With a downward twist of her lips, she informed him, “I don’t like the gleam in your eye.”

“It’s not a gleam!” Thrór protested. “It’s a twinkle.”

“Just as well, I don’t like it.”

“Well, can you blame me for a show of feeling over a romance?” he asked, realizing that he would get no more help from his queen that night and removing the rest of the clasps for his beard and hair himself, taking a few chunks of black and grey hair with them. “It’s - ah, that’s alright, I don’t really need my chin - it’s exciting!”

“Is it?” Dísa asked skeptically. Facing down a charging boar armed with nothing but a hunting knife was exciting. Shooting an orc dead in his tracks with your last arrow and picking through the corpses of his fellows to retrieve more was exciting. Riding a horse through the Greenwood without disturbing the Elves was exciting, but watching a pair of otherwise sensible dwarves fall to pieces over each other? That was a dull night of theatre.

“Oh, aye!” Thrór was nodding vigorously, as though he could change his wife’s mind by getting a certain number of bobs in per second. Dísa appeared unmoved, but the motion managed to dislodge a few of his more stubborn adornments. “Fundin’s a good lad, big heart, and Miss Halldóra’s sweet as they come - whip smart, no mistaking! And it’s a bit of a novelty, isn’t it?”

It was almost too much, it really was. The idea that Fundin might be old enough to think seriously of settling down with some lass made Dísa feel vaguely queasy for reasons she couldn’t put her finger on. She’d rather not discuss it at all, but it was rapidly becoming clear to her, between Gróin’s dire predictions about the girl’s suitability and Thrór’s determination to play matchmaker, that avoiding the subject was not going to be an option for her.

Turning away from her husband, she undid the beads in her own hair and beard, lips pursed and shoulders tense. “Novel how?”

Either Thrór could not sense she was upset or he did not care. Without losing a jot of his joviality, he lay down on the bed upon his back so that his face was at her elbow and he could look at her, even as she seemed determined not to see him at all.

“I think we could do with a bit of romance around here, brighten the place up,” he said decisively. “Grór got himself married miles away and how many times have I met his wife? Three, maybe, four if we count the wedding, which I don’t since I hardly said a word to either of them. Can you blame me for wanting to help Fundin along? I’ve never been privy to a proper courting in my life, ours _least_ of all.”

Neither a romantic nor a sentimentalist, Dísa was a warrior above all else; she knew when she was under attack. The muscles in her back grew even more tense and she rose from the bed, hands on her hips. It was an open stance, a novice’s mistake, but she’d been taken off-guard. “What’s that about, then?”

Thrór, damn him, actually looked perplexed “What’s what about?”

“The...” she struggled to find the words to name the source of her ire. “That... _tone_.”

“I haven’t got a tone,” Thrór remarked, rolling over and sitting up. His wife took a half-step back from him, her eyes accusatory.

“You have,” she argued, weight shifting to her right leg, ready to parry a blow or flee the scene; he expected she would parry for she rarely fled, but he did not think he was poised to strike. “Going on about courting like some addle-brained poet. You think you were cheated.”

“Dísa,” he said, trying to modulate his tone into something more soothing, but unable to eliminate the wry note in his voice completely. “I think I can safely say, with no chance of being called a liar, that ours wasn’t a classic courting.”

“Oh, well, my apologies,” she shot back caustically. Her sun-darkened cheeks were turning a little pink, whether from rage or some sense of embarrassment it was difficult to tell. “If you wanted gems and serenades, you ought to have spoke up years ago!”

Thrór stared at her a minute, brow furrowed and mouth open. So, Dísa wasn’t putting herself on guard for an attack; she was feinting to strike him before he had his defences up.

“If I’d known we were sparring, I’d have armed myself before coming to bed,” Thrór said, rising up on his knees upon the bed so the two were eye-level. Even-tempered he was, good natured, but if anyone could get his dander up, it was Dísa. No one could rile him as much as she could. No one made him happier, either. “Truth be told, I was just grateful you turned up for the ceremony - and _stayed!_ A show of admirable restraint on your part, even if you did send my heart dropping straight to my bowels when you hesitated giving me your hand.”

The dwarrowdam made some scoffing sound in her throat, but Thór reached out and caught her arm, pulling her closer, looking right into her eyes. “Don’t you deny it! The _juzrâl_ said ‘Give of him your hand,’ it took you five minutes to raise the damn thing!”

“I didn’t - ” she began, but stopped. She could not say there was no hesitation, it was not like her to lie. Nevertheless, she shook his hand off and mumbled, “It wasn’t five minutes.”

“Felt like an eternity on my end,” Thrór said flatly, staring at her, unblinking. “I _bled_ for you and you were there having second thoughts!”

“I gave you my thrice-damned hand, didn’t I?” she said, jaw clenching against the urge to look away from him. “In the end.”

“The end,” he quoted her, dropping his voice in pitch. “Like a funeral dirge! Most think of marriage as a beginning, it’s.” He broke eye contact then, closing his eyes and rubbing his brow. When he fell back to rest on his haunches, he was shorter than her again and she could see the top of his head, the grey hairs that sprouted in a greater profusion with every passing year. “I had good reason to fear, I think. I knew you never wanted to be married you never wanted to have children - ”

“I _didn’t_ have children,” she corrected him. “I had _a_ child. One.”

Thrór, of course, would have been happier if they had _five_ little dwarflings running around the mountain, but Sigdís told him when she asked him to marry her that he would content himself with one child if the Maker saw fit to give them any. She was not going to give up _all_ her best years to the raising of half a dozen heirs; one was all that was needed and one he had.

When her husband said nothing in response, she spoke again. “Beginning, end,” Dísa threw her hands up and spoke to the ceiling. “What does it matter? It’s done! It was my choice, Thrór, I’ve told you that a thousand times!”

“You say choice,” Thrór’s voice was steady, but his lips were set in such a way that Dísa grew alarmed that he was going to give way to tears. “But for nigh on fifty years now, I’ve been hearing ‘sacrifice.’”

There was a knock on their bedroom door then, followed by the turn of the bolt and Thráin’s sleep-mussed black head poked itself through the crack between wall and door. They must have been louder than they realized for he yawned and crossly inquired, “Are you going to stop soon? I’m trying to sleep.”

“Just about finishing up, lad,” Thrór got out of bed immediately and crossed the room, putting a hand upon his son’s shoulder and leading him back to the nursery. “Sorry about that, I forget your Ma has a voice like a bellows - ”

The door shut behind them and Sigdís hesitated. She wanted nothing more than to take a walk down to the Guard’s training halls and beat the stuffing out of some practice figure, but the hour was late and to flee the scene would feel too much like a retreat. Instead she finished braiding her hair, doused the torches and got into bed.

The mattress dipped beneath Thrór’s weight when he returned. For a minute, he lay in silence beside her, but she knew enough not to hope that he thought her sleeping. He always knew when she was faking. Before long, he edged closer to her, pressing his face into her broad back and lightly resting a hand upon her hip.

“Are we having a fight?” he muttered to the space between her shoulder blades.

“Depends,” Dísa did not roll over, but she did not move away either. “Are you angry with me?”

“No,” he said, all too quickly for her to believe him. “Are you with me?”

“Nah,” she replied and she wasn’t, not really. Just frustrated, with everyone and everything. It was Gróin's fault, she decided. He'd hear it from her in the morning.

“Good.” Thrór said, moving her hair aside and kissing the back of her neck. Dísa took hold of his hand and moved his arm until it was more fully around her waist. Face half-buried in her back, it was not long before Thrór’s breathing slowed and he was asleep. His wife lay awake for some time after until she trusted Thrór was too deeply sleeping to be easily roused. She shifted out from beneath the weight of his arm and thus unencumbered, finally slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As often happens in these situations, sometimes Durin Family Feels turn up unexpectedly and divert the narrative flow away from adorable fluff to angsty contemplation. We will resume our regularly scheduled shenanigans in the next chapter.


	6. Chapter Five

Halldóra’s heart gave a queer lurch as she piled books onto a cart for transferring to the scriptorium. _There he is again,_ she thought, excitement bubbling up inside her that made her face hot and her palms damp.

It was the handsome young guardsman from court, the first time she saw him without his helm, she had to stop herself from gawping - and probably did a poor job of it. He had come into the library the day previous and she recognized the way he wore his beard as well as the outline of his fine nose. She expected he would look smaller without his armor, but the fine muscles and sinews of his arms stood out all the clearer where he’d rolled the sleeves of his tunic. He was sooty, probably from working in the forge and only hovered around the bookshelves, not touching anything with his grimy hands.

She would have inquired if there was anything he wanted - for though his handsome face was plainly visible, she still hadn’t any idea what color his eyes were and wanted to find out - but one of the aids beat her to him. Evidently they did not have what he was looking for, he spoke to the librarian only briefly before taking his leave.

Halldóra was not one of the staff in an official capacity, though she spent enough time in the stacks that she thought she deserved an honorary title (and a salary, she once teased her brother, but Haldr only scoffed at her). She had grown up more in the libraries and archives of Erebor than she had in her family’s suite and as such, often was called from her duties when her brother required an extra pair of hands to ensure that scholars’ needs were met with minimal chaos and bloodshed. Already Haldr had his sister’s reassurance that when she was not required at court, he would have her assistance during this trying time. Her brother called it an _invasion_ , Halldóra herself was slightly more diplomatic and referred to it merely as an occupation.

Wintertime was the most dangerous time to be a librarian - or, indeed, a scribe - in Erebor. Dwarves traveled all over the continent to the Lonely Mountain to take advantage of their vast stores of books, parchment and scrolls, the greatest collection of history, lore, and literature in the entirety of Middle Earth, save those archives silent and enclosed beneath Khazad-dum. When the caravans arrived in Erebor from the East and West, they would be full of visiting scholar, champing at the bit to lay hands and eyes upon the treasures stored and lovingly tended by dedicated dwarves for generations.

The caravan from the Blue Mountains arrived a full two weeks ahead of schedule, which was bothersome. Haldr had been in a foul mood all day, shouting profanity-laden orders to his staff and apprentices who rushed to and fro, piling blank scrolls and sheaves of parchment together for use, darkening their fingers with lampblack and staining their tunics with resin to make ink enough to get them through the season - or, as they were more colloquially known, the Scholar Wars.

“There’s a reason they come in winter,” Haldr groused to the underlings under his charge the day before he personally carried dozens of carrels into the reading room from their banishment to storage the previous spring. The dusting off was left to the servants, but he personally wished to arrange to the room so that their visitors would not trip over one another - there would be quarrels enough without the expert on Númenorean architecture accidentally tripping the linguist with a particular affinity for Quenya who took issue with his misappellation of Melkor as Belegûr in his published treatise on Ar-Pharazôn’s temple.

“To have some occupation during the dark months when they’re little needed at court?” a dark-haired, dark-eyed dwarfling named Elísif suggested brightly. A tenth-year apprentice in the library, she had not yet grown tired of presenting her Master with optimism and cheer in the face of his ever-present derision of everyone around him.

“Because they’re arseholes,” was the dour reply she received. “They know the caravans will not depart again ‘til spring - barring some tragedy - and so we’re stuck with them until the roads thaw.”

“Not if tragedy strikes,” Elísif pointed out.

“They never come when you need them to.”

That morning, he gathered everyone together before the first rush of academics descended upon them. He poured everyone a dram of whiskey from a bottle in his desk and raised a toast for triumph over their enemies (may they be blinded by ink and their quills grind flat) and a swift, glorious death if the tide of battle turned against them. They all drank, from the youngest apprentices who coughed and spluttered as the spirits burned their throats, to the oldest master who chuckled and wearily nodded, tossing back the drink and wishing, not for the first time, that Haldr would invest in deeper glasses.

The best scholars came early, left at mealtimes, and stayed only until a reasonable hour for retiring. Halldóra took a morning shift, piling books that were requested to be laid out on a reserved book wheel. She’d been making quick work of it, intimately acquainted with the place upon the shelves of the books as she would have been with the dwelling places of dear friends, until she was utterly distracted by _his_ form, rising tall and stately like the mountain itself over the heads of the apprentices and visiting scholars.

Fundin, son of Farin, Captain of the King’s Guard under old King Dáin, dead in his lord’s service these seventy years. His was a noble family of fine lineage and even finer reputation. Much was made of the son, youngest of Farin’s children, but a warrior of some skill, equal to the skill of his legendary sister the Queen.

Naturally, she combed the archives looking for any mention of his name. Out of purely academic interest, in one who was so young to be so exalted in his liege lord’s service. Nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he was fair of face and fine of form in a manner that made her knees weak. Thank the Maker she had a job to do at court, somehow he always managed to position himself right in front of her and if she didn’t have her pride in her craft, she might spend all her time in the throne room staring at him. She used to think the King’s Guard were indistinguishable in their red armor and helms that obscured their whole countenance, save their beards, but the son of Farin caught her eye foremost among them.

How could he not? He was the tallest, broadest dwarf she’d ever seen, with muscles that were hard and round as boulders and the thickest, darkest hair and beard she had ever seen, to say nothing of his strong, well-formed brow and the handsome nose she’d noticed straight away, even when he was covered from head to toe in armor.

Halldóra wondered how deeply her nose had been buried in her books to have missed him all these years. They must have been in school together at some point, they were close enough in age, but she remembered nothing about him. Granted, her early years of schooling were taken up in reading, writing and being bored to tears when her fellows took forever and a day to grasp concepts she’d mastered long before she sat at a student’s writing desk. Always she thought it was a blessing when her mother insisted she be removed from that stifling environment, but to have missed _him_...well, she was beginning to have second thoughts about her academic trajectory.

Oh, _oh_. Their eyes locked as she pushed the cart toward the doorway. Her grip upon the smooth wooden handle tightened and her heartbeat picked up. She’d get him whatever he wanted, she decided then and there, the rarest, most precious tome from the archives, inked in blood, shining with gold leaf, the cover inlaid with diamonds, no questions asked, if only she could get a good look at his eyes and know what color they were -

“Arrgh!”

With an almighty crash, Halldóra and the cart went toppling over and landed on top of a young foreign dwarf who she managed to run down in her eagerness to cross the room. Red-haired with a darker red beard, he blinked up at her, looking simultaneously confused and mortified.

All thoughts of the color of the young warrior’s eyes fled as Halldóra scrambled to her feet, not sure if she should right the cart, gather the books or help the visitor to his feet. She did none of the above, only wrung her hands and stammered, “Oh! Oh, my _deepest_ apologies, I am _so_ very sorry - ach, d’you...are you - ”

“Ah, apology accepted. No harm done,” he said, clambering to his feet. His lilting accent marked him out as a Broadbeam through and through as he beat the dust from his coat and handed her one of the volumes that had fallen to the floor - and caught him in the eye, if the reddening of his left eye and rapid blinking was anything to judge by. “Were you in a hurry?”

“A wee one, aye, but that’s no excuse,” Halldóra said, setting the cart back on its wheels and falling to her knees to gather the book, darting her head around like an owl to reassure herself that Haldr wasn’t lurking behind her, ready to thwap her on the back of the head with one of the sturdier volumes. Luckily, she managed to find rewrites to fill the lord’s request; Haldr didn’t like giving scholars originals if he could help it, even when they swore up and down that they’d not let a drop of ink touch the pages, they came back speckled nevertheless.

The Broadbeam dropped to the floor to help her, handing over two books, but pausing when he picked up a third. “Are these the prophecies of Durin III?” he asked, glancing at the titled stamped upon the leather cover.

“They are,” Halldóra confirmed, taking the book in her own hand and giving it a pointed tug; the scholar did not let it go.

“What luck! I’ve need of this volume, as it happens, surely it’s proper recompense for being knocked off my feet.”

Halldóra grimaced a little, but to her credit did not loosen her hold on the book. Requests for materials might be made up to a year in advance; this was placed by raven six months ago, to be set aside the morning after the caravans from the Ered Luin arrived in Erebor. She could hardly give it away, accidents aside.

“I’m afraid not,” she said, pulling it closer to her, though the other dwarf still kept his hold. Chancing a crooked smile she shrugged and added, “It’s against policy.”

“Ah, but surely an exception could be made in extraordinary circumstances.”

“No queue-jumping,” Elísif skipped over to them, looking very merry as she thrust a sheet of parchment under the Broadbeam’s nose. She spent so much of her day running around acting on the orders of others that it fairly thrilled her to give orders herself. “If you’ll just fill this out, I’ll send it to the masters straight away to be added to the ledger.”

The Broadbeam glanced it over, taking it in his free hand, fingers tightening on the book of prophecy. “What is this?”

“Request form,” Halldóra replied, hoping she’d be able to snatch the book away while he was distracted, but no such luck. “We’ll need your name, where you hail from, your purpose in visiting, what materials you request, how long you’ll be needing them and your signature to assure us that they’ll suffer no abuse at your hands. If this is your first visit, a Master’s signature is also required to, erm, vouch for your character.”

The dwarf looked at her askance, a smile toying around the corners of his mouth as though he thought she might be joking, but Halldóra merely blinked at him. She was in deadly earnest, would a banker give credit to a debtor? They were the keepers of the greatest treasures Erebor boasted, taking a minute to jot down a few assurances of proper intent was no great price to pay to her mind.

Evidently the visiting scholar did not agree. “I’ve been a Master these past seven years!” he protested.

“Have you availed yourself of our holdings before?” Halldóra inquired in what she hoped was a blandly pleasant manner, but she could not vouch for her tone, not when his hand was still upon her book. The dwarf hesitated and his grip slackened; quick as lightning Halldóra had the book well away from him, clutched protectively to her chest as she added brightly, “Welcome to Erebor! We’ll just need a signature from one who has been here before - and remains in good standing, naturally. Er, I must go, Elís can answer any questions you might have about accessing the books, can’t you dear?”

“Aye, Miss Dóra,” the dwarfling nodded confidently and with one sturdy push, Halldóra fled the scene, leaving a cocksure apprentice behind to occupy the dwarf who did not seem to quite realize what had happened.

All the better for her. She exhaled and scuttled along to the doorway quickly - just in time to see Fundin squeeze through the door, making his way out of the library at a rapid pace. Halldóra stopped again and deflated slightly, sighing her regret softly. Missed him again. When she saw him once more, he would be helmeted and obscured. As she made her way to the reading room, she wondered beneath her disappointment just what _was_ he seeking in the library anyway that he’d come so frequently when, to her knowledge, he rarely set foot over the threshold?

The answer was, though she had no way of knowing, that there was nothing in particular upon the shelves that Fundin sought; he merely wanted her company. As it turned out, he had an easier time getting her to speak to him blocking the staircase up to the scribe’s perch in the throne room than he did in, what he assumed would be the quiet peace of the library.

Not academic minded in the least, he had no idea what he was in for when he pushed open the heavy double doors and stepped inside the huge complex of rooms hidden deep within the mountain, well away from any Men or Elves who might come calling. Fundin thought of libraries as near silent places, like tombs for books. He had never been so wrong in all his life.

There were dwarves _everywhere_ who all seemed to be in a great hurry, some pushing carts, some carrying stacks of books as tall as they were and just as heavy. The shuffling of boots, the scratching of pens, the murmuring of dozens of voices reading aloud came as a great shock to him. The first time he walked through the doors, he walked immediately back out again, certain he had come to the wrong place.

Yesterday he returned, after putting a few hours in at the forge. Still dripping sweat and covered in soot, some of the dwarves paused in their work to look at him with glances that were equal parts annoyed and anxious. He hovered in the doorway for some minutes, spying Miss Halldóra, but not speaking to her. When one of the librarians asked him if there was anything he wanted, he stammered some nonsense (he could hardly request an audience with her as he might request a book - there were no forms to fill out to take pretty dwarrowdams out of the library) and went on his way.

The reason for his sudden interest in this neglected corner of Erebor had to do with the fact that his sister was _wrong_.

Because he saw Miss Halldóra when the matter was resolved with the Grand Sovereign of Dale and Lofar and she was _just_ as beautiful to his eye as she had been when she requested he stand aside. It almost made him wish he’d blocked the way to the podium again, just so she would speak to him once more, but he was not so bold as to inconvenience her. It would likely not endear her to him, in any case.

Loni, who also had guard duty that day and noticed the fact that his fellow did not keep himself as erect and immobile as he ordinarily did, would not let him hear the end of it. No sooner had Fundin arrived in the forge (once upon a time he thought it a great blessing that Loni also found smithwork suited him, but no more) than he waved his hammer over his head to get his attention, crowing, “Hast thou seen thy lady-love? Did she glitter as bright and bonny a new-cut diamond? Or send up a cloud from all book-dust on her sleeves?”

The forges where the metalsmiths worked their trade were boiling hot from the fires and the din from a hundred hammers upon a hundred anvils sounded all around him. Fundin was sweating as he divested himself of his coat and jerkin to get into his shirtsleeves and apron.

“Shut up,” he retorted, hefting his own hammer and drowning out whatever remark Loni made in reply - he would not, naturally, shut up - with work.

Eventually Loni paused to refresh himself, he returned later with a tin cup of water for Fundin as well. “Come on, don’t be cross,” he implored. “She’s pretty enough, I’ll grant, but not so pretty you ought to lose all your humor over her. Why the long face? She didn’t turned you down, did she?”

“No,” Fundin mumbled, taking a gulp of water without looking Loni directly in the face. “Turn me down for what?”

“Whatever it is the young folk do when they’re courting!” he replied, grinning lopsidedly at his friend. “Nipping down to Dale for a treat, walks to the top of the mountain to see the moonstones glow at night...bit late in the year to gather heather, but I expect there’s a rose or two about hidden ‘neath a rock as’ll make a fair gift. You can’t just expect a lassie’ll propose marriage without so much as a new hair bead from her lad - or did you?”

“No!” Fundin said again, louder this time. Marriage, of all the foolish talk, he didn’t even _know_ the girl and though he was loathe to speak of his fancy aloud to anyone he found himself doing just that. “I’ve only spoken two words to her - first day she came to court, nothing since - and one of them was ‘ah.’”

Loni stared at him, jade eyes popping out of his head, before he burst out laughing. “What’s that I hear? Fundin the Fearless, first in the fray, last out, scare to talk to a wee lass who stands no higher than his elbow? By the Maker, _that’s_ a story for the mead hall!”

Without a word of warning, Fundin reached out and slapped Loni so hard on the back of the head, the other lad nearly tumbled into the slack tub. “Come off it,” he growled. “I haven’t had time to talk to her, have I?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Loni asked when he righted himself. “Just say, ‘Morning miss, read any good books lately?’ I’ll lay down eight silvers that’ll get her jabbering and then slip in summat ‘bout going into town. Easy as anything!”

It was all very well for Loni who, as far as Fundin knew, never set his mind to courting anyone in particular, but the plan sounded rife with difficulty. In the first place, while she had not yet arrived late to court, it was usually a near thing, so there simply was not time to make conversation. In the second, what was he to say when she stopped talking about books she read she would probably turn the topic to him and Fundin had not voluntarily read a book in well over a year. In fact, he still had the last one he’d tried to read, long overdue to return to the library. It was an historical treatise about Telchar, smith of Tumunzahar, he made it halfway through the somewhat arduous description of the forging of Kirikh-Barkâl, put it down and never picked it up again.

Relating the fact that he had effectually stolen one of the library books and _still_ not managed to read it would probably do nothing to win Miss Halldóra’s affections.

“I won’t have a chance,” Fundin replied irritably. “Court doesn’t meet half as often as usual in wintertime and I...well, I had some business in the library and she was running around with not a moment to spare.”

“Had some business,” Loni echoed with a knowing look and condescending pat on the arm. “Aye, of course you did - business of the heart.” He winked and Fundin gave him another shove toward the slack tub, but only managed to send his friend barreling into one of the apprentices.

“Watch where you’re going!” the dwarfling snapped and Fundin noted with a pang of alarm that it was Thráin, laden down with firewood to feed the forge.

“Can’t hardly manage that when your uncle uses me as a sparring dummy,” Loni said by way of apology, picking up some of the kindling Thráin had dropped. “I thought love was supposed to make one musical or poetic - not quarrelsome!”

“I’d not know anything about it,” Thráin remarked, annoyed, as he deposited the wood within the great belly of the oven, taking up a poker to shift it around. His hands, still young and soft, were gloved for the task, but he was no longer as fire-shy as once he’d been and did not leap back when the logs fell and sparks flew toward his face.

“All the better to offer advice - you’ve not got a bias,” Loni insisted, but the dwarfling ignored him. Undeterred, Loni redirected his attention back to Fundin. “Look here now, if you’re going to be violent, let’s think of this as a battle. Strategize, eh? Square those shoulders of yours, look that lassie straight in the eye - ah, now, hang on, to do that you’ll want to be on your knees first. So, hunker down, look that lassie straight in the eye and say, ‘Let’s you and I share a pint when you come down off that perch of yours, little bird.’”

Thráin paused in the act of stoking the fire, drawing his sleeve over his face to mop up the sweat. “Are you talking about Dóra?” he asked, looking at Fundin incredulously “ _She’s_ the one causing all this trouble?”

Dóra. Not Miss Halldóra or even plain Halldóra. _Dóra._ Which implied that his nephew was more familiar with the young lady than anyone Fundin had yet spoken to.

“You know her?” he asked, staggered.

“No,” Thráin replied immediately, the lie falling easily from his mouth. It was clear from the way his eyes darted about that he regretted butting into the guardsmen’s conversation at all.

Against all hope, he sought out his Master, on the chance that he would be told to collect more coal, to run out into the forest to chop some wood, _anything_ but engage his lovesick uncle in conversation. His wishes when unfulfilled and with great reluctance he shuffled his feet and replied honestly, “I do. Know her. A bit.”

_”How?”_

Sighing in a very put-upon manner, he directed his reply to the soot-darkened ceiling rather than to his uncle directly, “She’s been tutoring me in Elvish.”

Fundin’s mind was all awhirl. Miss Halldóra was Thráin’s _tutor_ and neither his sister nor brother-in-law had ever set eyes upon her? How was that possible? When he took a moment to reflect upon it, he admitted to himself that he shouldn’t be surprised by that fact. While Dísa and Thór were very much involved in Thráin’s life and education there were certain aspects of his tutelage which interested them more than others. Namely training for warfare and his apprenticeship as a smith; neither his sister nor their king were especially talented linguists and it seemed that their difficulties with the tongues of their neighbors had been passed on to their son.

“Has she?” Fundin asked, hammering hanging loosely at his side. There were a thousand and one questions he wanted to ask Thráin, but he settled on one that would encompass all of them in one go. “What’s she like?”

This was exactly the sort of open-ended inquiry that Thráin hated at lessons. Ask him for facts, he would recite them dutifully, names, dates, order him to perform specific exercises and he would do so readily, but give him a vague question that could be interpreted a thousand different ways and he was at a loss.

“She’s...short,” he said at last, but seeing that was _not_ the reply his uncle sought, pressed on. “Er...she’s funny?” he tried again and Fundin brightened some. “Not like the other Masters who know everything and act like it’s a bore teaching. She’s nice. And...she says she can see where I go wrong, but doesn’t make me feel stupid about it.”

That made Fundin feel significantly better and endeared her to him tremendously. He’d never been great shakes at lessons, he was the last in his class to read, his penmanship was widely criticized, and he was as bad at language learning as his nephew. He knew his Khuzdul, of course, to not know the language of his people would be an impediment as severe as deafness or blindness. And the Common Tongue, naturally, as a warrior he had enough knowledge of the Black Speech of the Orcs as was necessary, but Elvish always sounded like nonsense to him. Oh, he could catch a phrase here and there when the representatives of their race came to court, but to his ears, the words sounded fluffy, insubstantial, like the bales of cotton that the weavers had shipped in from the South. Not at all like the definite, sturdy speech of the Dwarves.

More than once as a dwarfling, he’d heard the customary sigh, followed by the joke, ‘It’s a blessing you’re not destined for the scriptorium; better a spear-carrier than a scribe.’ He had no desire to pursue such a craft, there was no precedent for it in his family line, but the words still _stung_. No child liked to be called stupid, no matter how accurate the insult might have been.

Thráin, though, wasn’t stupid at all, he just needed a bit of additional help and he was pleased to know that Miss Halldóra, in addition to being the embodiment of loveliness itself, was also kind.

Loni did not miss the way his friend perked up; Fundin looked more cheerful and more like usual self than he had in nearly a week. Rubbing his hands together in a conspiratorial way, he eagerly inquired, “When’s your next lesson, laddie?”

“Oh, no,” Thráin raised his hands and shook his head, understanding the question behind the question immediately. “Absolutely not, _no_ , I’m not having any part in your...love games or whatever it is all you grown sorts are playing at. You are _not_ sitting in on my Elvish lesson.”

“I could use the tutoring...” Fundin began, but Thráin wouldn’t hear a word of it.

“I’m sure you could, but it’s _my_ lesson,” he retorted, folding his arms and tilting his chin up to glare at Fundin. Sometimes Thráin could be a taciturn little fellow, but it came to forcing him to do something he had no interest in doing, he could dig his heels in with the best of them. “And if you come anyway, I’ll claim not to know you.”

“What if he just came round to fetch you for supper?” Loni asked reasonably. “Toward the end, so he’d not be sitting there making moon eyes at her the whole time?”

This time Fundin did _not_ make to shove his friend; he was actually being helpful rather than merely irritating.

“I know where the dining hall is, I don’t need fetching.”

“There could be a copper in it for you for forgetting,” Loni added, but rather than appearing intrigued by the offer, Thráin was only insulted.

“My father is King Under the Mountain,” he reminded the guardsman. “I don’t need your coppers.”

“What if I just asked you nicely?” Fundin crouched down and looked Thráin in the eye and implored, “Thráin, beloved kinsman, best and only son of my sister, who I love dearly, may I _please_ escort you to the dining hall after your next lesson?”

Thráin wanted to say no. It was clear from the scuffing of his toes on the floor, to the furrowing of his brow to the puckering of his lips that he dearly, dearly wanted to refuse. It was equally clear, from the drawn-out silence following his uncle’s question, that he would not be able to do so. He just looked so _pathetic_ with his earnest expression and wide eyes. If Thráin refused, he knew he’d feel awful about it later and decided to spare himself the guilt.

“Oh, alright,” he said at last, bracing himself as he was swept into a bone-crushing hug between both Loni _and_ Fundin. It was a credit to his own hardiness that he didn’t turn blue once they let him go and set him back on his feet. “ _If_ it’ll stop everyone going on about it so I can sleep nights, I suppose - only don’t ask me to tell her about your virtues. I don’t think I could manage that.” Not without grinding his teeth and looking pained, anyway.

Only then did Thráin’s Master appear to order them all back to work. Fundin actually _whistled_ as Thráin walked obediently to his Master’s side to continue the day’s lessons. When he glanced back over his shoulder and saw the ridiculous grin on his uncle’s face, he already started to regret his decision to be generous hearted.

But then, he reasoned, his part was done. Fundin would come to fetch him, he and Dóra would speak - he certainly hoped they didn’t do something as revolting as _kiss_ in front of him - and that would be the end of it. As a matter of fact, he could probably sneak off to supper without either of them being any the wiser and he would not have to hear another word about it as long as he lived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a sudden burst of inspiration (and a very bad day that I effectively soothed with brownies and Fundin/Dora feels) and rattled off this chapter! It's always nice to shove the hero and heroine back in the story - they're _so_ close to meeting!


	7. Chapter Six

Although her hair had begun to silver and she carried upon her face and arms the scars from many a battle and hunt gone slightly awry, Sigdís could play the part of the petulant dwarfling well enough. Now, for instance, she was sitting atop the table in the small council chamber in her tunic and trousers, swinging her legs over the floor and knocking the heels of her boots audibly against the table legs.

Gróin was already glaring at her, “You don’t need to stay.”

“Oh, no,” Dísa smiled at him in a mocking sort of way. “Wouldn’t miss it. This is my entertainment for the night.”

She was no better disposed to the notion that Fundin might court the new scribe than she had been the night before, but Gróin was positively beside himself. Dísa found herself fervently wishing that Óin never got it in his head to court. If her brother was this bad when a lass caught Fundin’s eyes, she had no idea how poorly he’d take it if his own son got it in his head to leave the nest.

Of course, she thought the whole matter was ridiculous no matter who partook in it, so she could not claim any authority when it came to matters of the heart. Neither could Thrór for that matter, but his shining eyes and brisk manner gave him the air of an expert. The court had not met that day and he’d spent his time occupied in smithwork. Before their little meeting, Thrór washed up, but was still wearing his leather apron and had soot jammed tight under his fingernails, having all the appearance of the village smith. Or, perhaps more accurately, the village matchmaker.

“Well,” Thrór, laying his hands flat upon the table to call their attention to him. “I think whatever happens, it ought to be done on a clear eve - no moon. You know the odes, ‘Take him and cut him out in little stars,’ ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire,’ all that. When romantical notions fix themselves in the mind, it’s best if it’s done by a starry night.”

Dísa did not bother hiding her grin at the expression on Gróin’s face, he was very funny when he looked flabbergasted. “What are you going on about?” he asked in the vaguely befuddled manner of someone who’d been late to the theatre and missed half the plot.

Thrór blinked once, surprised by the lack of agreement from his brother-in-law. “I thought we were meeting to discuss how best to give Fundin and Halldóra some time to get to know one another,” he said slowly, looking upon his wife in an accusatory manner. “ _You_ said that was why we were meeting.”

“I said no such thing,” she denied flatly. “I said Gróin wanted to see us because he was worried Fundin was going to run off with that scribe he’s never spoken to and he was tearing his beard out over it.”

“Elopement?” Thrór looked, of all things, disappointed. “Nonsense! Fundin’s a good, dutiful lad, he’d not cheat me of a proper wedding.”

The word ‘wedding’ made Gróin turn a little green. It seemed that no matter what he said to his sister about his confidence in the strength of Fundin’s attachment and the likelihood that he might seriously court the little scribe, he was not as at ease with the notion as he pretended to be in the pool. As a matter of fact, he was growing less and less sanguine about the entire matter as the minutes ticked by.

When he first discovered Fundin’s infatuation (something his brother did not seem entirely aware of, at first), he thought it amusing. He thought it comedic that his infant brother should be sweet on someone, in the way it was always sweet when a child developed some immature infatuation. But his brother was a child no longer, but a grown dwarf (rather too grown, all things considered) who had the means to act upon ill-conceived inclinations and what if, in the throes of first love, he gave his heart away to someone who could only cause him pain? Fundin was a good lad, honest and loving and Gróin had no intention of letting him get his heart broken by some too-clever little miss who encouraged his fancy.

“We’re not yet approaching the subject of weddings,” Gróin replied and added under his breath, “By the Maker’s hammers, I _hope_ not. We don’t know anything about this girl.”

“We surely do,” Thrór protested. “She’s a very small, highly intelligent workhorse who isn’t likely to hop on a caravan to the Iron Hills next spring. Sounds a diamond to me.”

“You’ll forgive me,” Gróin said in a tone that implied he did not care whether Thrór forgave him or not. “But you’re...less discerning in extending your friendship than others.”

Beneath his heavy dark moustache, Thrór’s mouth dropped open and his chest expanded in a pose of indignation. “And just what is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“You like everyone,” Dísa explained. “And don’t make that face, you know you do.”

Thrór rolled his eyes and folded his arms. “Ah, no, I see. Gróin’s can’t get his head round the notion that I don’t decide I dislike someone before I’ve ever met ‘em. And why should I, I’d like to know? I meet far too many folks to hate them all on sight, I’d have a neverending headache if I lived my life being _that_ contrary. Anyway, I’ve spoken to Miss Halldóra many times - ”

“Over the last _week_ ,” his brother-in-law muttered.

“ - and she’s a delight,” Thrór concluded firmly.

“But we don’t know anything about her!’ Gróin exclaimed, tugging at his beard in frustration. It seemed his sister’s concerns were warranted and he might indeed have the whole thing ripped off by the end of the night. “Her father’s dead, mother’s long gone, she’s appeared out of nowhere from the depths of the archives!”

“She’s got a brother,” Dísa interjected. “Talk to him if you’re so worried she’s...whatever you’re worried she is.”

Gróin was strangely quiet at that suggestion. “No, I don’t think so,” he said shortly.

“Why not?” his sister asked, eyes narrowing.

“Never _you_ mind - ”

The door of the hall opened with an almighty bang. “Sorry I’m late!” Maeva scurried over to them, slightly breathless. “One of the apprentices had a bad burn at the forge - no, not Thráin,” she added before either of his parents could inquire. “He’s got sense enough not to hold his hand in the fire on a dare, I was called down when I got your message, what’s this all about, then?”

“Your husband’s got his heart set against Fundin taking a wife,” Thrór informed her before anyone else could get a word in.

Gróin grit his teeth and clenched his fists. He was no legal scholar and did not _think_ it was treason to strike the King Under the Mountain when said King was being an arse, but it was probably best not to risk it.

Maeva seemed confused. “We’re having a meeting in the council chambers because Fundin’s taken to courting a lass,” she asked slowly, gaze settling on her sister-in-law who looked equal parts amused and annoyed. “Truly?”

“Truly,” Dísa confirmed, quick to add, “Wasn’t my idea. Why won’t Gróin speak to the head librarian?”

“Haldr?” Maeva asked, surprised at the abrupt change of subject. “I don’t - oh. Well, probably because he hasn’t been forgiven for performing a bleeding over one of the anatomy encyclopedias.”

“It was still readable,” Gróin grumbled. And there was another mark against the girl - her brother was a lunatic. The incident his wife referred to occurred was years ago and was an emergency besides, yet he could not step foot over the threshold of the lending library without being descended upon and searched for knives. “Anyway, we’re going off course! I don’t like the idea of Fundin getting it in his head she’s fond of this Halldóra girl before I - that is to say, before _we_ \- have the full measure of her.”

“How do you suggest we go about getting the full measure of her if her brother holds you a grudge?” his sister demanded despite herself. A notion struck her then, and she smirked. “Ah, or that could be a boon! Say the brother remembers _you_ and isn’t fond of the idea of his sister allying their household with a family of book-ruiners?”

“It wasn’t ruined, for the last time - ”

“I can’t believe - I’ve left Óin sitting out in the hall because I thought this was important,” Maeva interrupted them. “A matter of urgency in the council chambers!”

“It is important!” Gróin exclaimed, his voice a booming sound that echoed from the vaulted ceiling and bounced around the walls. His wife pursed her lips and seemed unmoved.

“I think you’re being very silly,” she said simply. “Fundin’s been of age these ten years at least - ”

“Twelve,” Dísa and Gróin clarified at once. They were so rarely in complete agreement that they took each other by surprised, each eyeing one another from the corners of their eyes. Thrór turned a laugh into a cough and stifled it in his hand as Maeva went on.

“Twelve years,” she nodded. “Quite old enough to make up his own mind. If there’s a lass he’s taken a shine to, I’d hope - as he’s been made to prepare for _war_ , mind - you think he’s old enough to risk a spot of romance.”

With a snort like a bull, Dísa hopped off the table at last and stood with her arms akimbo. “War’s not in the least like romance.”

“Right,” Gróin grimaced visibly. “It’s much more dangerous.”

“Oh, you’re being such a child,” Maeva scoffed. “Did you risk life and limb to woo me?”

If he was being entirely honest, Gróin would have to admit that he had not and he was an honest dwarf. He was also a dwarf who loathed losing an argument and for that reason and that reason only, he dismissed that very good point entirely.

“That was different,” her husband countered. “I _knew_ you, we’d apprenticed together for years - _decades_ before we took to courting. Fundin never saw that lass that he could remember before she took the position as court scribe and that night he’s going on about her teeth.”

“Teeth?”

“Aye,” Gróin shook his head sadly, as though discussing a mutual acquaintance whose gangrenous limb needed to be removed. “Lad spoke on her smile, said she had a gap ‘tween her teeth - who’d be like to notice that unless they’re well and truly in it?”

Whatever reaction he expected that revelation would bring, it was not the one he received. The line of Maeva’s lips softened and her eyes became downright misty. “Oh, now if that isn’t the dearest thing I’ve heard all day - ” she began, but stopped when her husband openly glared at her.

Not entirely without sympathy, she crossed to him and lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder, trying not to smile. “For your peace of mind, I’ll make my own inquiries, alright?” Maeva continued in the soothing voice she used on fussy infants. “Glóa’s expecting her second, I was planning on paying her a call tomorrow anyway. She’s been scribing these fifty years at least, I’m sure she knows something about Miss Halldóra that will give you an inkling about her character.”

“Which I’m sure is beyond reproach.” Thrór had been quiet, but his manner and stance made it quite clear that he thought the matter was closed. “There’s as sensible a solution as I ever heard, my thanks, Maeva.”

“Well, someone’s got to be sensible around here, else nothing would ever get done,” she pointed out. “Come along,” she tugged Gróin to the door, but his feet were firmly planted upon the ground and he did not budge. “Your son’s waiting for you and he hasn’t had his supper yet - and neither have you, I’ll wager ten gold pieces that’s why you’re in such a temper.”

With a huff of irritation, Gróin turned toward the door, scowling, "I'd like to think I'm ranked a little higher than a dwarfling in terms of temper, thanks."

* * *

Outside the doorway, the dwarflings had been engaged in a very similar discussion as that which occupied their parents. Thráin sat on a stone bench in the corridor outside the chamber with a book open on his lap and a frown upon his face. He had been trying to read the texts Dóra wanted him to look over before their next lesson, but he could not concentrate, not when he remembered his promise to his uncle.

At the time he’d agreed that Fundin ought to come round after his lesson it seemed a bother, but now it was beginning to feel like a trial. What was his role in all of this? He _wanted_ nothing to do with it, but involved himself anyway. Could he just sneak away once the two were in the room together. Did they need a chaperone? What was a chaperone supposed to _do_ anyway?

It was a relief when he saw Óin idling outside the door, shuffling his feet and looking bored. Thráin snapped his book shut and trotted over to confide to his cousin, without a word of greeting, “I think I’ve made a blunder.”

“Have you?” Óin asked with mild interest. “How’s that?”

“I told Uncle Fundin he could come to the end of my Elvish lesson and make eyes at my tutor.”

Óin’s eyes widened and he let out a low, impressed-sounding whistle. “You have,” he confirmed. “You have definitely made a blunder. Why’d you do something like that?”

“I wasn’t my idea!” Thráin exclaimed hotly. “Loni thought it up and Fundin _begged_ me to do it, I couldn’t say no, could I?”

“You surely could,” his cousin insisted. “You still could! Run off to his rooms and tell him you realized it’s a stupid idea and you won’t have any part of it - who’s the girl anyway, is she a troll? I’ll bet she’s a troll.”

Thráin did not quite understand why two dwarves might want to marry in general or what Fundin saw in Dóra specifically that made him go addle-brained for her, but he did draw the line at describing her as trollish. “She’s alright, just a girl,” he shrugged. “She wears spectacles to read and she’s got a pretty singing voice.”

“Hmm,” Óin stroked the auburn fluff at his chin contemplatively. “He must think she’s something though, if he’s wanting to meet her special.”

“He does,” Thráin sighed and rolled his eyes so hard that for a moment all Óin could see were the whites. “He went to the _library_ to look for her, but she was too busy to talk to him.”

“The library?” Óin asked incredulously. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen his uncle pick up a book in all his life. This was more serious than he thought. Taking a step closer to Thráin he asked, “Could you do that again? With your eyes, I mean, I want to see how far they go.”

Thráin obliged him and tilted his head back so his cousin could have a better view of the whites of his eyes, “Aye, he went looking, but he couldn’t catch her so now he figures on meeting her someplace she’s got to stay for a bit.”

“It’s clever,” Óin acknowledged. “If I poke you, try not to blink.”

“It wasn’t his idea - ow!” Thráin pulled back and rubbed at his tearing eye with one fist. “It was _Loni’s_ idea, as I said. And I agreed to it ‘cos I thought he might...you know, _cry_ if I told him nay.”

Confronted with the mental image of his uncle breaking down into tears all over Thráin’s shirtfront, Óin made a face of utter revulsion. “‘Course you couldn’t say no if he was going to get weepy,” he agreed. “I guess there’s nothing for it. Does your tutor know he’s coming?”

“No,” Thráin shook his head one hand clasped tightly over his left eye which was still smarting. “Should she?”

Óin was so little older than Thráin by the reckoning of their race that it hardly mattered, but he liked to think those few years he’d spent babbling and crawling and toddling while his cousin was squirming and crying came with a little extra wisdom that Thráin had yet to earn. It was this imagined wisdom that caused him to nod his head gravely and reply, “Aye, forewarned is forearmed, you know.”

“I don’t think forearming would do much good against Fundin,” Thráin pointed out. “Not unless she was quick and slashed his ankles, but I’ve never seen her fight.”

“Not to _fight_ him,” Óin sighed. “Of course not! Only she mightn’t be pleased with the attention, eh? What if she thinks _he’s_ a troll? Best let her plan a retreat.”

Thráin lowered his arm and stamped his foot in childish frustration. “This is why I didn’t want to have aught to do with it!” he declared loudly. “Now I’ve got to think about what she thinks of him and he thinks of her and it’s hard enough remembering verb conjugations without all _that_ swimming round in your head.”

A sympathetic hand patted his shoulder. “It’s a good deed, anyway,” Óin consoled him. “And now Fundin owes you. You could probably call in a dozen favors if this goes off alright.”

“I don’t want any favors,” Thráin replied glumly. “I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

The ears of the Maker were deaf to his pleas for when Thrór, Sigdís, Gróin and Maeva collected their children to take them to supper, it was all any of them could speak about or think about. The chatter only ended, ironically, when Fundin himself sat down at table and took his meal with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Fundora-less chapter, alas, but never fear for the lovers will meet in the next installment!


	8. Chapter Seven

Normally Thráin met Halldóra in the library for their lessons, but it was overcrowded now with the influx of scholars so she requested that he come and see her in her own office. It was a small room that presumably held all the usual furnishings such as desks and chairs...and a floor, there was very likely a floor, but every flat surface was covered in parchment, books, scrolls, ink bottles and quills.

“Erm, sorry, dear, let me cut you a path,” Dóra said as she scurried inside ahead of Thráin. For a moment, she merely stood among the chaos with a slightly bewildered expression on her face, as though she had no idea where all of the mess had come from. “It’s been a busy last few days.”

Thráin, standing awkwardly by with his hand upon the door handle, eagerly said, “I could come back.” Aye, in a week, two, maybe, and after such a great amount of time had passed, his uncle would surely have forgotten Dóra even existed. Or else plucked up the courage to approach her without an intermediary.

But his tutor dashed his plans immediately. “Nonsense!” she tutted around an armful of scrolls, deposited atop an already teetering pile of folios on a window ledge. The window did not look out of doors, of course, but was set in a wall in the scriptorium. With the scholars at work, the stained glass glowed as brightly as if the sun itself was shining in. “What sort of dwarf would I be, if I didn’t have time for my own prince?”

“A very usual kind of dwarf,” he mumbled so low that she didn’t hear him over the rustling of paper and the thump of piling books on her overflowing desk.

“Well,” she breathed at last, surveying her handiwork. “The floor’s clean anyway, it’ll have to do.” Plopping down upon the flagstones she gestured that Thráin should do the same. “Just like a second shelf, eh? Or a very large desk.”

 _Or a floor._ Thráin hesitated only a moment before he sank down before her. The floor was clean, all the books that had been littering the place where they sat caught the dust before it could settle. It was a cozy spot, all things considered. With the stacks of books around them, it was almost like a cave built of leather and vellum instead of stone.

“How have you been since last we met? Did you find time to translate that - ” Thráin handed her the folded sheaf of parchment before her question was through. Dóra wasn’t exactly a battleaxe as a tutor, but when he turned in assignments half-finished or worse, didn’t turn them in at all, she got the saddest look on her face and said she was disappointment. He’d prefer a sharp rap on the knuckles to her disappointment and accordingly made it a point to always complete his work for her in a timely fashion. “Excellent! Marvelous, thank you dear.”

Thráin shrugged and ducked his head to conceal a small, pleased smile; she always had nice things to say even before she’d read over his work. It was another impetus to get it done on time. “It’s not very good,” he admitted honestly.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Dóra informed him. Glancing over the parchment, he noticed a few winces, but when she’d gotten to the end, she replied, “It’s not as bad as all that. I’d say even if it isn’t ‘very good’ it’s ‘fairly good’ and that’s a start anyhow.” Placing the parchment flat on the floor between them, she pointed to the first of Thráin’s mistakes and began the laborious process of explaining how he’d gone wrong in such a way that he would understand _why_ he’d gone wrong.

Thráin’s mind was only half on his work. There was a clock in the room...somewhere, he was sure, but either it was buried or misplaced. He had no sense of time and glanced continually to the door, worried that at any minute his uncle was going to burst in and declare himself, leaving Thráin caught in the middle like someone pulled from the audience and thrust into the middle of a theatrical.

Dóra tapped his hand every now and again, noting his lack of attention. It was so severely affecting him that she gave up on corrections after a while. “Well, you spend too much time on anything and it all looks like nonsense after a while,” she acknowledged, refolding the parchment and tucking it into an inner pocket of her coat to save for later.

Worried that he was going to be the recipient of an unhappy look and a comment of ‘disappointed,’ Thráin tore his eyes away from the doorway and straightened up. “I’ll try harder,” he said at once. “I’ll pay attention, promise - ”

“It’s alright,” she smiled at him and he knew he hadn’t caused an offence. He meant what he’d said to Óin, Dóra was alright, a nice enough lass, if a little strange. Not the sort of dwarf one wanted to offend, with or without meaning to. “We should be working more on your speech anyhow, I hardly think you’ll be made to give over translations of their own history to the Elvish lords who come calling. We’ll work on a poem - ”

Thráin immediately forgot his vow to try harder, “Must we? I _hate_ poems.”

“And you’ll just _loathe_ this one,” Dóra replied, eyes sparkling with mischief. She got up and managed to find a slim volume, bound in green leather with the title stamped in golden Elvish runes, amid all the chaos on her desk. “It’s a love story.”

That was it. The Maker was plotting against him. The very cogs and wheels that kept the stars spinning overhead and the rocks that churned and shifted within the earth had been arranged so that Thráin, son of Thrór, heir of Erebor could have the worst week in his entire life. He hardly had it in him to groan - he did groan, loud and long, but it was an effort to do even that much.

“ ** _Lays and Tales_** ,” she said in the slippery speech of the Elves, as if she hadn’t heard him. Thráin dutifully repeated the words after her, but his tongue felt clumsy and he wanted to use the inflections common in Khuzdul, which of course, caused him to mangle the words so that they could not be distinguished one from the other.

“Let’s try that again,” Dóra said kindly. Thráin took a deep breath and held it for a count of ten. He was always worse at the beginning of his lessons than he was at the end, he reminded himself. “Slowly now.”

“ ** _Lays and Tales_** ,” he said and it sounded a little more like proper speech rather than babbling.

“Very good.” His tutor flipped forward to the poem she wanted. The pages were thin in her hands, so thin he could see the words clear from one side to the other. He hoped she didn’t hand the delicate little book off to him; he’d tear it, he was sure. As soon as his mind formed the thought, she held the book out to him, thumb marking her place. “Here you are, **_The Lay of Leithian_** , known in the Common Tongue as ‘The Song of Beren and Lúthien.’”

“Beren?” Thráin scooted backwards with a sneer of disgust and did not even reach to take the book. “Beren the Butcher? The Man who led the slaughter of the Dwarves of Tumunzahar?”

“The very same,” Dóra bridged the gap between them and bopped him lightly on the nose with the spine of the book. “Aye, I know he’s the villain of that tale, but he’s the hero of a great many more in the Elventongue. Go on, take it, to the end of the first Canto, if you please.”

Thráin touched the book with the very tips of his fingers, both out of a fear of damaging it and a reluctance to have his flesh brush the name of the Man who killed so many of his race unjustly. His family was not descended of Tumunzahar and Gabilgathol - or Nogrod and Belegost in the tongue of the Elves in the latter age. Shooting a very disgruntled look at Dóra, which she met with a serene smile, he wet his lips and read slowly and without inflection.

 _“ **A king there was in days of old** ,”_ The first bit wasn’t too bad, began with a king, just as many Khuzdul lays did. He went on, _“ **Ere Men yet walked upon the world -**_ ”

 _“ **Upon the mould** ,”_ she corrected him gently and Thráin nearly threw the book at her.

“ _Really_ , Dóra?” he whinged like a dwarfling half his age. “No one talks like that anymore in Elvish or Common Speech.”

“But they did once,” she reminded him. “And this is a tale as well known among Elves as the Song of Durin is to us, so go on with your reading. You can make as many faces at me as you like and don’t worry if it takes a bit of doing before you get it right, I’m not going anywhere.”

Thráin attacked the poem with redoubled effort because he most certainly did _not_ want to be there all night. The second he heard his uncle knocking, he was going to bolt as soon as he could and never speak to either of him again for making him so put-upon. Well. At least, he wasn’t speaking to Fundin again, Dóra didn’t know a thing about it and he still wasn’t sure whether he should take his cousin’s advice and warn her.

In the end, he decided to leave it up to fate. If he finished the canto before Uncle Fundin arrived, then Dóra would face him without a warning. If he finished the poem and it was still just the two of them sitting on the floor, he’d tell her what his uncle and Loni had been plotting and give her time to hide behind her desk. If she could find her desk.

A clock chimed the hour from...somewhere and Thráin was still reciting.

“Alright, dear, let’s have done, eh?” she said, but did not take her book back when Thráin tried to hand it to her. “No, no, keep it, If you could read it to the end when next we meet - ”

“Noooo!” he howled.

“ - well, I suppose I could have you copy the first canto from Sindarin into Quenya and back to Sindarin again - ”

“I’ll read it!” he swore, placing a hand over his heart to imply his sincerity. “Cover to cover. Every word.”

“I thought you might,” she grinned and reached out impulsively to ruffle his hair. Dóra got to her feet and held out a hand for Thráin to take, even though he did not need the aid to rise to his feet, being just as tall as she was. “Alright, three days hence, I’ll see you back here and we’ll maybe have chairs, won’t that be a treat - ”

A tentative knock on the door made Halldóra pause in surprise and Thráin flinch in horror. Raising one shoulder in a shrug, Dóra picked her way across the room as her pupil’s eyes darted about wildly, seeking a place to hide and finding nothing suitable.

 _Stout heart!_ A voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like his mother chided him. _The line of Durin doesn’t shirk from danger!_

Fundin was standing outside the door, looking awkward and out of place in a way he never did in his armor or within the vaulted chambers of the court or the Guard’s training yard. Halldóra’s little room was one of the plainer offices given to the scribe and one of the smallest; Fundin had to duck to get through the doorway and he accidentally kicked over a pile of books as he made his way over the threshold.

“Sorry!” he exclaimed, voice loud as a thunderclap in the tiny room. The apples of his cheeks flushed red and he modulated his tone down a pitch. “Sorry,” he said again as he knelt to right the tomes he had toppled.

“No, it’s alright, let me,” Dóra said, kneeling at the same time and bumping her shoulder into his arm. They both twitched back as thought they’d been burnt and Dóra lost her balance and fell on her bum with a squeak of surprise. Fundin did not seem to know whether he should be righting the books or the scribe and so half-knelt and half-crouched with his hands fluttering impotently in the air. During his moment of indecision, Dóra righted herself and re-piled the books, sliding the lot of them out of Fundin’s reach - where they prompted an avalanche of another dozen tomes. “Oh. Dear.”

“Ah...” That one was not, technically, Fundin’s fault and so he knew he did not need to apologize, but he rather desperately wanted to to. For spilling that first lot of books, for bothering her, for being there at _all_ and why had Loni talked him into this in the first place? When he got over his shame at botching this whole meeting enough to show his face to the rest of the mountain, he was going to sneak into the guards’ quarters and shave his eyebrows.

“That’s alright, erm, I mean...” Dóra’s heart was fluttering and she was sure she looked like the biggest fool the handsome guardsman had ever seen. Imagine, falling at his feet like that, after a little knock to the shoulder! But she was close enough now to see his eyes - blue. His eyes were blue. “Can I help you?”

“No,” Fundin said abruptly. Then, when she blanched, quickly amended, “No! That is, I mean, not, no, well, I do mean _no_ , but - ”

This was even more awkward than Thráin’s attempts to recite Elvish poetry and the youngest and most sensible of the dwarves in the room was not going to stand for it a moment longer.

“Fundin, this is Halldóra. Dóra, this is my uncle, Fundin,” Thráin interrupted, walking to the door with Dóra’s book in his hand. “He wants to talk to you. If anyone asks after me, I’ll be eating my supper. Good evening.”

Head held high, he stepped around them and strode out the door, leaving his uncle and his tutor to fend for themselves.

After an instant of silence when they both stared at Thráin’s retreating back, knowing it would be cowardly to ask him to come back and both equally desirous that he do so, Fundin looked at the fallen books behind Halldóra and nodded toward them. “Want me to pick those up?”

“No, no, leave it, it’s fine,” she said, sitting back on her haunches and tucking a braid that had fallen out of its arrangement behind her ear. Laughing hollowly, she made an encompassing gesture and sighed, “No worse than the rest of the place. Oh, what a mess and - oh, you must think I’m a _fool_ \- ”

“Not at all,” Fundin said sincerely as Halldóra blushed the bright hot scarlet of one who just realized they had been speaking their thoughts aloud. “I-I think you’re brilliant. Really. Sorting that mess with Ryce and Lofar and all.”

“Oh, no,” she shook her head so hard another two braids dislodged and drooped around her face; one of them lost its clasp entirely and her loosened hair unwound itself halfway down into curly waves that she batted out of her face. “King Thrór sorted it out, I just...well, I can’t keep my mouth shut, can I? Or my nose out of things. It’s why I’m a scribe, after all, perfect craft for someone who’s a bit nosy.”

“Well, it’s a lovely nose,” Fundin said and bit his tongue once the words were out, cursing himself for an idiot just as Halldóra’s eyes lit up and she replied in kind.

“Yours too!” she cried out, then winced when she realized how ridiculous she sound. Then, as was her wont, decided to explain herself. “Well, it’s only that, there’s not much to see of the guardsmen at court ‘neath your helms - not that you don’t look fine in your armor, of course! Erm. But. I, well, saw your nose and thought, ‘That’s got to be attached to a handsome face, hasn’t it?’ And so it is. Your face, I mean. Handsome.”

Halldóra wanted the foundation to split and swallow her up. She’d wanted that to happen since she knocked against Fundin and fell, no, actually, before that, the second he walked into her office and she could only think to pick up the books that had fallen. But Fundin did not seem about to scoff at her, quite the contrary, he smiled broadly and his bluest blue eyes crinkled and he seemed pleased by her rambling, horrible attempt at a compliment.

What could she do? She smiled back and, if anything, that seemed to please him even more.

They were still kneeling on the floor, but Dóra decided to stand up, beating the dust off the knees of her trousers. Fundin remained as he was and she found herself grateful; even when she was standing, it didn’t put her at a much greater height advantage when he was sitting on his knees. Still, it made her feel a bit more at ease since he wasn’t looming over her with that handsome face and fine beard and those broad shoulders and big hands and _blue_ eyes.

Rocking back on her heels a bit nervously, she clasped her hands tightly behind her back and said, “Thráin said you wanted to talk to me about something? I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’d just come to pay compliment to my nose, it’s an awfully long walk from the dining hall.”

“It’d be a journey well worth taking,” Fundin said honestly and may the Maker help her, she tittered like a deranged bird. Luckily, Fundin did not seem to find the sound in the least bit irritating, he chuckled and said, “But, ah, no. I keep saying that. I shouldn’t. Erm. Right, I was wondering...wondering if you ever had...if you weren’t working. Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” she said and clamped her lips shut because she could _not_ complete that thought. _Sometimes when I’m sleeping or eating or fiddling to keep myself company since my brother goes mute after he gets in from the library._

“Any - ” he began, but stopped since he thought he sounded too eager. When he started again, he sounded no less eager and just kept going, “Any time soon?”

“Three days hence,” she replied promptly. “I’ve got the afternoon free - there’s that opera being put on. Scholars won’t take time off for many things, but theatre is one of them, my brother shan’t be needing me and I was going to see the performance.”

“Oh,” Fundin said, looking a little defeated. She had plans.

“I’ve seen it though,” Halldóra added quickly, noting the look on his face. “Five years ago - too soon to see it again, really, I don’t know what I was thinking - unless you’re going too. That being the case, I’ll be there and perhaps we could - ”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” he replied. Then he tugged at his beard nervously and added, “Unless you - ”

“I don’t,” she shook her head and twisted her fingers and continued, “if you - ”

“I don’t,” Fundin shook his head as well, tilting his head and smiling up at her crookedly. “So if your afternoon’s free and my afternoon’s free - which it is - perhaps we could. Be free...together.”

Halldóra started nodding at the first ‘free.’ “That sounds...good,” she said, cursing herself internally. All the words she knew and she chose ‘good’? What about ‘exquisite’? Wonderful? Unbelievable? Unbelievably, exquisitely wonderful? That sounded about right.

Yet Fundin only continued to smile at her. And what an unbelievably exquisitely wonderful smile it was. “Good,” he nodded. “Dale?”

“Dale’s good,” Halldóra confirmed and bit her tongue in penance for using that word again. While her mind was busy chastising her mouth, her right hand decided to get in on the action and extended itself to Fundin as if she were closing a business transaction and had five reams of parchment off him for three pennies apiece. “Meet you at the front gate, then?’

“Front gate,” he agreed, taking her hand and swallowing it up in his as he gave her a shake that radiated up her entire arm. “‘Til then.”

“‘Til then,” she repeated, stepping back so that Fundin could rise without knocking into her again. “Goodnight - oh! Are you alright?”

Fundin had forgotten how low the doorway was and smacked his head into it as he backed out of the room, eyes on Halldóra the whole time. “Fine,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. Though it was a very square hit upon solid stone, he strangely wasn’t feeling any pain. “Goodnight,” he said as he ducked out into the hall.

“‘Night,” Dóra echoed. She waited until he disappeared completely around the corner before she closed the door behind him.

Out of sight, Fundin did not check to see if the corridor was deserted before he sank down to the floor, his back against the stone wall. This time when he very deliberately slammed the back of his head against it, there was pain. Halldóra, uncaring of the fact that she would be left with a bigger mess than ever to tidy, flung herself atop the pile of books on the floor, causing more to topple over. They had no way of knowing it, but at the same time they each drew in a deep breath and shouted identical self-abuse at the ceiling.

“You’re an _idiot!”_


	9. Chapter Eight

Maeva loved midwifery. The act of ushering new life into the world filled her with the greatest joy and satisfaction that she had ever known; there was tragedy, to be sure, and pain, but it all fell away in her mind when a wee one opened their puffy little eyes and howled, good and strong after their mother’s long effort to birth them.

A midwife of skill held a position of great esteem under the mountain, as highly respected as that of their greatest warlords and ladies. And the job itself had a few perks, it gave extras that could not be found on the battlefield: access to the best of Erebor’s not inconsiderable store of gossip.

One met so many dwarves of so many and varied occupations in the course of checking in on expecting mothers, over the months leading up until the birth, Maeva liked to think that she came to know them fairly well, often they would share a cup of tea or something stronger and have a chat. Often about birthing and child-raising, but just as frequently their talk would turn toward the mother’s work or her partner’s, sometimes the larger realm of court and politics and what the neighbors were up to.

Not that Maeva was the sort to spread the knowledge gained at her visits around, of course - she just liked to be informed. And sometimes knowing the right dwarves in the right places could prove useful, especially when her husband was beside himself with worry over the least worrisome cause.

She understood Gróin’s concern, truly, for most of Fundin’s life he’d been more a father than a brother to him and he worried about his choice of courting partner as any parent would. It might have been called noble, if Gróin wasn’t so determined to be contrary. Sometimes he was the gloomiest dwarf to ever walk beneath the mountain, expecting rain on the sunniest days, estimating the death tolls from battles would be twice as high as they were. She knew for a fact that every time Sigdís mounted a horse he sullenly predicted that _this_ would be the ride where she was thrown and brained herself upon the mountainside. And so it was only to be expected that when Fundin took to courting, he would assume that his younger brother had found himself a girl who could only make him miserable.

Not once in fifty years of marriage had Maeva ever said, ‘I told you so,’ when things worked out for the best. Yet she took a great measure of satisfaction from smiling beatifically at her husband in a way that let me know that she was right from the first and he might have a few less worry lines if he simply listened to her and stopped fretting so.

Maeva was fully prepared to favor Gróin with that bright smile later that evening as she assured him, as she was positive she would, that Glóa found Miss Halldóra to be a fine girl, a suitable match for Fundin and a gem all around. It was with this optimistic view that she briskly took up the doorknocker and waited to be shown in to Glóa’s apartment.

All was well with mother and babe, Glóa was far enough along and hale so it was merely a matter of waiting until the birth. She had one already, a bonny little boy of twenty-two, with his mother’s chestnut brown hair and his father’s emerald green eyes. “They say,” Glóa remarked, relacing her trousers and adjusting her tunic over her belly, “if you carry high it’s a girl.”

Maeva smiled indulgently, packing away her instruments and closing the clasp of the leather back she carried them in. ‘I’ve heard that too,” without a drop of condescension in her tone. Glóa had all the airy manner off someone repeating a nonsense story they’d picked up somewhere, but her eyes had all the apprehension of one who rather wanted to believe the tale was a true one. “I’ve also heard that if you carry low it’s a girl, to the back it’s a girl and if it’s all three at once it’s twins!”

She laughed then, gently and Glóa joined her in mirth, chuckling ruefully. The number of potions, tonics, positions and foods that were said to bring on girl babies were almost beyond count and not once in all her years of mastery had Maeva known a single one to be foolproof. “The babe’ll be what it’ll be and there’s no trying to soothsay,” she said sweetly, but firmly.

“Of course,” Glóa nodded dismissively, showing nothing at all of disappointment in her voice or expression. “Tea?”

“That would be lovely, thank you,” Maeva nodded, fiddling with the strap on her bag unnecessarily. Even dwarves who did not whole-heartedly believe the dwarves who, upon seeing an expecting mother, suddenly and without warning became diviners, it was still a bit of a blow to have brought home the knowledge that no one _could_ tell what a babe might turn out to be. Delicacy of manners was not a quality often found among dwarrows, but Maeva was unique in that regard; sometimes a sensitive matter called for delicate handling.

When she sat down to her mug of hot tea, taken with two generous dollops of honey, she asked Glóa about her work. She was well into her second mug by the time the scribe stopped long enough in her diatribe against all visiting scholars and their awful reading voices and their theft of ink-pots and their _ludicrous_ theories about the ‘meaningful’ patterns some of them saw while mapping out Second Age dragon attacks, “I don’t believe in turning _tragedy_ into _conspiracy_ , it’s disrespectful,” before Maeva got a word in edgewise.

“And your colleagues? How are they faring?”

Glóa rolled her eyes and stirred her tea with undue force. “That depends entirely on the dwarf - if you’ve got a talker like...Logi, well, he couldn’t be happier. Hasn’t done a full day’s work all week, he’s up and down from the scriptorium to the library and back again, if he wears the hinges out on the doors, Haldr’ll have him up on scaffolding making the repairs himself, mark me.”

“I knew Haldr was particular about the books,” Maeva smiled as Glóa rolled her eyes, “I shouldn’t be surprised his care extends to the doors as well.”

“Care,” Glóa repeated with a smile of her own. “Aye, there’s a word for it,” leaning in conspiratorially she added, “ _He’s_ never marrying, so I’m sure you won’t have cause to see him much, I might as well say. You know the dragon sickness? I’d say Haldr’s invented a malady of his own, librarian-madness, obsessed beyond the usual bibliophile’s preoccupation.”

And there was the moment to - delicately, mind - proceed with the true matter at hand, “Do you, know, I hadn’t any idea he had a sister,” Maeva remarked, quite naturally. “Not until recently, do you know her at all?”

“Only by reputation,” Glóa replied and Maeva tried very hard not to let her disappointment show. “But it’s quite a good one, given how young she is. Her being appointed court scribe was all anyone could speak of, before the scholars came. Remarkable girl, some might say _uncanny_ , but then, I don’t know her well. I did know her mother.”

Maeva would have let the matter drop, but for the expression that passed over Glóa’s face, she looked like she’d just tasted something sour. “Oh?” she asked, putting her cup down on the table and raising her eyebrows invitingly.

Glóa nodded once and hummed in the back of her throat. “She was _highly_ skilled. And very knowledgeable, but not...well, she wasn’t someone you’d invite over to share a pint, if you know what I mean.”

“Shy?” Maeva guessed.

“Cold - if you don’t mind my asking, why so curious? Don’t tell me Thrór’s displeased with her!”

“Oh, no!” Mavea shook her head. “Not at all, he thinks she’s a delight - charming, just charming.”

A hoot of mirth surprised Maeva so much that she poured herself more tea, just so she would have some occupation that wasn’t staring at Glóa with her mouth open like a piece of salt cod. “Charming! Never thought I’d see the day when a child of Hallthór and Dómarra was called charming!”

“Well…” Maeva was a tad put-off by such a response, she was beginning to fear that she might not get the chance to exercise her gloating smile at all. “She’s managed to charm our Fundin, he’s rather sweet on her.”

“Is he now?” Glóa looked markedly interested, then let out a long breath. “I wish him luck, but knowing her mother - could be the daughter’s different, but I doubt it. You know what Men say about apples and trees?”

It was clear from Maeva’s expression that she did not.

“Like breeds like,” Glóa clarified for her. “Dómarra was alright so long as you were talking craft with her, but that’s all she did talk about. Never a how-fare-you, no questions about your family, she never wondered how anyone passed the evening. And asking her about her own? You’d have better luck getting one of the statues in the crypts to chat with you.”

Maeva had not met Miss Halldóra personally, but one thing that Sigdís did say about her at supper was that the lass was fond of chatter. If she was unlike her mother in that regard, perhaps they had more differences between them. “And the father?”

“Oh, I was very young when Hallthór died,” Glóa replied. “He fell with King Dáin and Prince Frór, a blessing on both their spirits, he seemed pleasant enough, I suppose. Could be it was his death made his wife so unfriendly, but she was always a queer sort, especially about that little girl. Kept her locked up tight, took her out of school because she was too bright for it. It wasn’t until Halldóra was near fifty that she began to see other tutors besides her mother. I remember her about, she was a strange child, always off by herself with a book - ”

“I’m sure that can be said of plenty of scribes, no matter how young they were when they started apprenticing,” Maeva remarked with a wan smile. “Bookish to the last.”

“True enough, but she was… _different_. I remember when I was small, by mid-afternoon I was champing at the bit to have some time with my friends, to lark about, but not Halldóra. Either by her mother’s side or her brother’s and they aren’t two dwarves who would breed charm in any living creature.” Glóa rested her hands on her stomach and sighed, “Again, I wish Fundin luck, if only to discover quickly that she’s not a lass he’ll want to settle down with. Not that she’ll settle, probably turn out just like her brother, wedded to her craft - I’m amazed the mother married! But then, you know, some want children for the ease of having their own apprentices ready-made, not for their own sakes.”

They spoke a little more, of other topics of general interest, but Maeva’s mind was not really on the conversation. Glóa’s words troubled her, they troubled her as they spoke, as she took her leave and as she made her way back to the healers’ quarter to restock her visiting back. On the way back, she made sure to swing by the apprentices’ lecture hall; they had a corpse, new-preserved and the smell of beeswax permeated the hall, despite the application of lime.

Óin was easily spotted among his peers; he was craning his neck to get a better view and elbowed the lass beside him to get her to keep quiet so he could hear. As she lingered, Maeva happened to catch her son’s eye. He looked up briefly and waved, a fluttering of fingers that she returned before she set off to pillage the supply cupboards.

Contemplating the rows of fresh white linen bandages, dutifully rolled by the apprentices, her son included, Maeva thought back to something Glóa said in her assessment of Miss Halldóra’s character that niggled badly, worse than the fact that Fundin might be setting himself up for heartbreak.

_Some want children for the ease of having their own apprentices ready-made._

Children often followed their parents in their craft; it was natural, being raising around an occupation that one would have a knack for it or else they would strive to learn all they could, simply based on admiration for their parents. That was how Maeva began, her parents were both healers, and her elder brother. Her younger brother would be finishing his apprenticeship in the next two years and begin tending warriors on the battlefield once he was of age.

Gróin’s mother was a healer along with most of her family - actually, now that she thought of it, Glóa was a cousin of Gróin’s, on his mother’s side, second or third, she did not recall. She was a scribe, there were always exceptions.

Exceptions. It was in Maeva’s nature to be optimistic, she had to be for the sake of her craft. Perhaps if she thought of this courtship like a birth, she would be more cheerful about it. So many things could go wrong, but when it all worked out, there was nothing better in the world.

And, she could admit to herself as she filled her bag and remembered Fundin’s pleasantly distracted air all through dinner the other night compared to his recent melancholy, she _so_ wanted things to go right.

* * *

The morning dawned bright enough, but by mid-afternoon grey clouds gathered and cast a shadow over the road to Dale. Fundin was wearing a cloak over his traveling clothes, but as he stood by the doorway and felt the wind pick up, he wished he’d brought his heavier, fur-lined one. There was no time to go back and fetch it now, if he left he’d surely be late and then Miss Halldóra might think he’d forgotten her, or worse, deliberately left her standing alone outside the Mountain like a fool.

Speaking of lateness, as minutes after minute passed by with no sign of Halldóra, he began to think _he_ was the one being made a fool of.

The gates flew open just as the worst of Fundin’s self-doubt threatened whispered that he’d _waited too long_ and _she wasn’t coming_ and he should take himself back to his rooms and stay there for the rest of his life to avoid Loni’s teasing.

The doubts flew away and his heart lifted in his chest at the sight of Halldóra, looking breathless and windswept, though she had only just come out of the Mountain. Her hair was flying out of its braids in curls that tumbled around her face and she was squinting in the dull grey light that reflected from the clouds. It made her skin pale and her eyes watery; he thought she had never looked lovelier.

“You haven’t been waiting long, have you?” she asked, walking up to Fundin, mortified with herself. “I thought I had plenty of time and my clock was chiming the hour, but I haven’t seen it in nigh on a week, so I didn’t know _which_ hour. It was only when I realized everyone else had up and gone for the noontime meal that I knew I was late! I’m always late, it’s a dreadful habit, one I’m trying very hard to be rid of.”

Fundin found it very difficult to believe that she had bad habits; though, being a naturally punctual dwarf himself, he could stretch his imagination enough to consider that she might have some habits that were less good than others. But not _bad_ by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing about her was bad.

“Do you suppose the weather will hold up?” she asked anxiously. It was then Fundin realized he’d not spoken a word since she emerged, he’d only stared at her. “Long enough for us to get to Dale, I mean? Once we’re there it won’t matter, there’s awnings and, of course, the shops themselves to duck into if he must. Do you drink coffee? I’ve got another lesson with Thráin tonight and it’s best if I’m well fortified before we meet - not that your nephew is a poor student! I didn’t mean to imply that, not at all, but it’s a long day and one needs something to get through it, don’t you agree? Or don’t you?”

“I like coffee,” Fundin said and cursed himself for the dullest dwarf under the mountain, but Halldóra’s face lit up and he thought that, if he could make her smile like that, then his banal comments must not have been so awful after all.

“Wonderful!” she clapped her hands together, chafing them briefly as she nodded down the path. “Shall we?”

Fundin nodded, tongue-tied once more. They were alone on the path, either the rest of the Mountain preferred to conduct their business in Dale late, early, or they had been paying more attention to the weather than either he or Halldóra bothered to do. It was thrilling to actually be _alone_ with her, but another soul on the road to break up the scenery might have been nice. It might have given him something to remark on anyway, rather than plodding along beside her in stony silence.

 _Say something!_ Fundin thought to himself desperately, but every topic of conversation died on his tongue. If he spoke of court, he would sound like an idiot since he only paid attention to the goings-on of visiting dignitaries half the time and not close attention at that. He could speak of war to her, but he worried she would find him boring, or too forward. Using Thráin as a gateway to conversation occurred to him, he was someone they both knew, but he thought his nephew had done enough for them already. Fundin was about to say something about the darkening sky, just to break the silence, but Halldóra beat him to it.

“How have you been?” she asked, glancing up at him out of the corner of her eyes. Brown they were, and warm, like the top of a fresh-baked loaf of bread. “Since last I saw you - how’s your head?”

“Fine,” Fundin replied, a hand rising automatically to touch the spot where he’d smacked it, though not even a bump remained now. Sheepishly, he shrugged and said, “Happens more than I should admit, being a guardsman. I’m meant to know what every bit of me is doing all the time.”

“Ah, but you can’t account for too-short doors,” she smiled up at him and he couldn’t help smiling back, but he frowned when she turned her head again, there was something caught in her hair, a flash of white and for one off-putting moment he thought it was a cobweb. Didn’t the servants clean the archives? Or did the head librarian drive them off too?

He relaxed when he saw that it was only a quill, caught up in a falling braid. Deftly, Fundin reached over and plucked it out, holding it out for her to take. “Did you misplace something?” he asked, a teasing tone in his voice.

Halldóra laugh, a light, cheery laugh that seemed to float away from them on the wind; he almost wanted to chase it. “Held on too long, rather,” she replied, taking the quill and tucking it into an inner pocket of her coat, the ink long since dried. “I thought I got the last of them. I always need one, it’s a good way of keeping one or two about in a pinch - I’d tell you to do as much with your axes, but I’d not want to see you go bald!”

Fundin laughed in turn and ran a hand over his thick hair. Baldness was not something that ran in his family, but he did check the mirror every now and again for a sign of grey among the black. Gróin said he began to grey in his seventies; luckily Fundin managed to surpass that record, but he had the distinct sense that time was running out. “I’ll have to tell Dísa about your methods, she might adopt it to keep an extra arrow about her.”

“Dísa?” Halldóra asked blankly.

It was Fundin’s turn to color slightly. “The, ah, Queen,” he clarified. “My sister.”

“Ah!” she nodded, her face all comprehension. “Of course! Well, if I can assist my Queen in the hunt, so much the better. I’m afraid it’s the only contribution I could ever hope to make - I’m _terrified_ of horses.”

“Are you?” Fundin asked, a little dismayed. “That’s too - hold on now, is it horses that spook you? Or ponies?”

“Both, either, doesn’t matter,” she shrugged. “I’ve only ever been around ponies - horses are bigger, so I’m more frightened of them!”

It might have been poor form to disagree with her so vigorously so soon into their acquaintance on such a comparatively unimportant subject, but Fundin shook his head. He _loved_ horses, almost as much as his sister did and he could not let the mistake stand. “Ponies and horses couldn’t be more different - well, aside from their being awfully similar in looks and use,” he explained. “Ponies are smaller, aye, but nastier. Horses are gentle.”

“I’ve never gotten near enough one to find out,” Halldóra confessed. Mercifully she did not seem vexed by the correction.

“I’ll take you,” Fundin promised, without giving her the chance to tell him aye or nay. It suddenly seemed very important that she at least experience something that made him happy, though he could not say why he felt that way. “Sometime, before it starts snowing. I’ll change your mind.”

Halldóra looked doubtful. “Take me to see _horses >_” she asked nervously. “Real horses? I don’t think - aren’t I too small?”

“I went riding with my sister when I wasn’t any bigger than you - smaller, even,” he informed her. “She held on tight, I never fell, I wouldn’t let you tumble off either. Do you trust me?”

It was a strange question. Strange to be asked between dwarves who, by their very nature, were slow to trust, even among their own people. Stranger still since he had done nothing to earn Halldóra’s trust, they barely knew one another. She seemed startled by the question and Fundin was just about to take it back, apologize, when a slow smile spread across her face and she replied, “Do you know, I think I do? Alright, I’ll ride with you if you _promise_ you won’t let me fall.”

Fundin put a hand over his heart and inclined his head toward her, “On my oath, I won’t let you fall.”

Halldóra stuck her hand out, as she had when they agreed to meet one another. “Then I suppose it’s - ” but a loud rumble of thunder cut her off and both dwarves looked up at the sky, which had only grown darker and greyer as they walked.

Lighting flashed in the distance and the sound came again, closer now. Then the heavens opened and rain poured down upon them with a force and fury that took them completely by surprise. They were closer to Erebor than they were to Dale, but not close enough that they could run back to the gate and make it worth their while.

Fundin looked around for shelter and spied a rocky outcropping, too shallow to properly be called a cave, but it would do to keep the rain off their backs until the storm passed. “Come along,” he called, plucking Halldóra’s sleeve so she would follow him. His legs were far longer, but her steps were quicker and they ran side by side until their backs were flush up against the dry rock. Halldóra shivered a bit and Fundin realized that she wore no cloak and he remembered how she was late in meeting him.

Without pausing to ask if she wanted it, he unclasped his cloak and dropped it over her shoulders; so much material pooled around her feet, it might have been a blanket. “Thank you!” Halldóra said gratefully, but looked up at him. “Won’t you be cold?”

Fundin shook his head, even as the wind whistled in through the cracks in the rocks and made his nose feel icy. “Nah,” he replied easily. “I don’t get cold as some, it’s what comes of being in the forges, the heat lingers.” Seeking to change the subject - if he didn’t _think_ about the cold, he would not _feel_ the cold, surely - he asked, “What was that you were saying?”

Halldóra held the cloak in place at her neck and stuck out her hand, “If you promise not to let me fall - and you promise I won’t get kicked - I’ll pay a visit to some horses with you.”

“It’s a vow,” Fundin replied and took her hand only to drop it, in surprise. Even accounting for the wind and the rain, her fingers were unusually chilled. “Your hand is freezing!”

Halldóra ducked her head and looked a little chagrined. “My hands are _always_ cold,” she lamented. “Comes of having ‘em propped up at the wrists all day, blood can’t get in them.”

Shyly, Fundin extended his own hands toward hers, “May I?” he asked, but she was already raising her hands, smiling and blushing furiously all the while.

It was quick work warming her hands, they fitted very snugly between his palms and disappeared completely under his own. His rough palms scratched the smooth backs of her hands lightly and though his touch was gentle, the motions were brisk and it was no time at all before he dropped her hands, warmed now from wrist to tip.

“Oh,” she breathed softly, tugging at the cloak to keep its weight from dropping off her shoulders and onto the ground. “That’s better. Much better. Thanks.”

Fundin smiled briefly and looked down on her. She was looking up at him so sweetly and he licked his lips, nervous, unaccountably so. He felt there was something he ought to say now, or, even better, _do_ , but just as the thought popped into his head, lightning split the sky in front of them and the boom of the thunder rattled they ground they were standing upon.

Both dwarves jumped, an action which moved them so close their arms brushed, but they stepped away from one another almost immediately.

“I hope it stops soon,” Halldóra said, looking at the rain that poured from the rock overhead in sheets. “I’d hate to think we’d wasted an afternoon.”

“Not wasted, I hope,” Fundin replied, cocking his head down at her. “Not for me. I got you to agree to go riding.”

Halldóra giggled again and here, in their little rocky hideaway, it echoed. “That’s not a waste,” she acknowledged. “That’s a miracle. A small one, to be sure, but a miracle all the same.”

With a wink and a grin, she closed the gap between them and bumped her shoulder into his arm. Fundin grinned back and lightly brushed his hand against her arm. They stood like that, barely touching, just feeling one another’s warmth, as they waited for the storm to pass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a little torn on the next part. Either full steam ahead with the plot, or maybe the rain lasts longer than they thought, prompting Óin and Thráin to become ADORABLE worrywarts. I mean, um, very mature, hardcore worrywarts. Also, I may or may not have written the second half of this chapter listening to "Weep You No More Sad Fountains" as sung by Kate Winslet in _Sense and Sensibility_. Conclusion? Dóra needs to sing something before this fic is over.


	10. Chapter Nine

It was still raining when Thráin went to Dóra’s office for his lesson. He was a few minutes before his time, but he’d read the poem in its entirety the night before and had many things to complain about. By now, he ought to have known, he should _never_ turn up early for _anything_ involving Halldóra, daughter of Hallthór, of Durin’s line. It was a minor miracle when she arrived exactly as nearby clocks chimed the hour, winded and clutching a mug of coffee whose contents she managed not to slosh all over the corridors of the Mountain in their entirety.

More often than not she would turn up, bouncing on the balls of her feet, chattering a mile a minute about what caused her to be her usual ten to fifteen minutes late. Thráin wouldn’t have been bothered by her tardiness, only she insisted that he not be cheated of his full lesson and would remain after the time when he was meant to be dismissed, thus making herself inevitably late for her next engagements.

Usually, when she was running very behind, she brought sweets. That afternoon, when Thráin was kept waiting so long he slid to the floor to sit outside her office door, he concluded that she must be bringing chocolates, bitter and expensive, since it was surely closer to the half hour than the hour.

When the half hour rang out, Thráin decided he had been forgotten and was about to walk to the dining hall to take an early supper when he stopped in his tracks, frowning.

Halldóra never forgot anything. She was never where she was meant to be on time, but she always got there eventually. Not bothering to stifle his annoyed groan, Thráin remembered that Uncle Fundin was taking her on an outing and concluded - not illogically - that some mishap must have befallen them because mishaps _always_ seemed to befall the dwarves around him in such a fashion as to inconvenience Thráin in the extreme.

 _Chocolate,_ he thought to himself decisively as he stalked away from Dóra’s office. _Chocolate and no more stupid Elvish love stories for a month - nay! Two months._

Thráin did not immediately make for the gate of the mountain. As it was still raining he first returned to his family’s suite to fetch his cloak and then ran by the healers’ auditorium where the dissections were carried out. The dull red locks of the dwarfling he sought were easily picked out of the crowd of emerging apprentices and, slippery as an eel, Thráin reached out and grasped his cousin by the arm, pulling Óin away from his fellows and dragging him against the flow of traffic directed toward the dining halls at a quick clip, until the taller lad dug his heels into the stone and forced them to stop.

“What’s got into you?” he asked, trying to wrench his arm out of his cousin’s grip and failing. Thráin might suffer the indignity of being shorter than his older cousin, but he was stronger and he held onto him with a grip of iron.

With an impatient huff, Thráin explained the situation; how Uncle Fundin had gone with Miss Halldóra on an outing to Dale, she had yet to return and the pair of them were probably both wandering the washed-out road from the village to the Mountain, soaked through and _lost_ , therefore they needed rescuing and Thráin had taken it upon himself to save them and decided that Óin would be his second-in-command on this mission. Óin’s response was somewhat less than enthusiastic.

“Oh, no,” he said, trying again to pull away, but Thráin just added his second hand to the effort and held him fast. “I’ve told you, I don’t want anything to do with this nonsense - and I thought you didn’t either. They’re grown, what makes you think they need help finding their way back?”

The look Thráin fixed upon his cousin was absolutely disgruntled; he was quite sure his cousin was being stupid on purpose. “They couldn’t even introduce themselves without help,” Thráin reminded him. “They’re _hopeless.”_

Óin opened his mouth to argue, but found he could not come up with a convincing argument against that assessment. “They are hopeless,” he agreed. “But this still isn’t our business, why not tell your parents? Aunt Dísa’s in charge of Fundin anyway.”

Thráin sighed and replied, “Because Amad and Adad don’t know how hopeless they are. And once they find out, they won’t trust Fundin with being the Captain of the Guard and Dóra will lose her post and court and they’ll both _cry_ and do you know who’s going to have to hear about it? Me! And I don’t want to; best to get them back safe and sound and forget it ever happened.”

“But why have _I_ got to go along?” Óin asked plaintively. “I don’t even _know_ the lass, worst’ll happen is Uncle Fundin gets a bit weepy and I think I can live through that.”

“You’re learning to be a healer,’ Thráin reminded him, as though that explained the genius of his plan. When it was clear that Óin still did not understand, he elaborated, “It’s cold, they might have frostbite, you’ll need to save them.”

“I haven’t learnt to save anyone from frostbite!” Óin protested. “I’ve only just seen what the inside of a heart looks like today.”

“I’m sure you’ll be useful somehow, come on,” Thráin gripped his arm tighter and pulled hard, sending Óin pitching forward, tripping over his boots.

“I haven’t got my cloak!” he cried, in a desperate bid to remain uninvolved.

“That isn’t my problem in the least,” he declared, giving Óin a withering stare before he pulled his cousin along after him, heading for the gate. “Now come _on_ , we’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

* * *

The night, though not warm, was not freezing either and the rain had let up enough that Fundin and Halldóra, hours before, decided to brave the rain and the odd flashes of lightning long enough to make a run to the tea shop in town. Well, Halldóra ran, Fundin jogged and kept one arm held out over her head so she was partially shielded from the wet by his cloak.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said over and over as she tried in vain to smooth her sodden hair back into a presentable configuration under the shop’s awning. “Getting soaked through would have served me right, forgetting my cloak.”

“Well, there was plenty of room for two under mine, it’s no matter,” Fundin said, shaking some water out of his own hair and beard. Halldóra opened the door once the two of them were as well groomed as they could be under the circumstances and gestured him inside.

Fundin ducked in and Halldóra followed; the shop was dwarrow-run, and though it catered to creatures of all stripes, was most frequently patronized by their own people. The brews ran too hot and too strong for most Men and Elves.

“Caught in the rain?” the proprietor smirked behind the counter. Halldóra blushed a pretty pink, and looked at the tops of her boots, but Fundin smiled back and shrugged.

“I hadn’t heard tell a flood was coming, but this seems a good a place as any to drown.”

The other dwarf laughed and fetched two glasses, adding over his shoulder, “I should say so - and if you neither of you mind my saying, you couldn’t drown with prettier company.”

The rosy hue in Halldóra’s cheeks darkened to scarlet and she looked away again; Fundin could not tell whether she was pleased or offended by the compliment and did not want to ask, lest she find his asking offensive. The proprietor did not seem to care either way, only returned to the counter, setting two mugs down and gestured to the urns and presses behind him grandly. “What’ll it be?”

“What’ve you got?” Halldóra asked, seemingly more at ease now that the conversation had moved to a discussion of coffee, an easier subject by far to discuss than the subject of her own relative prettiness and merit as a drowning companion.

The dwarf behind the counter obligingly removed a bag of roast beans, so dark they were almost black, glistening with an oily sheen in the candlelight, “Longest roasted, bitter, but it’s got some depth and heft enough to get you through the morrow. Have a smell, taste if you like, but I’ll warn you - it bites back.”

The aroma was indeed pungent. Almost burnt-smelling, but with an underlying warmth, like the heat of the hearth fire on a cold night. Halldóra was braver than Fundin and actually took one of the beans from the small sack and bit it in half. She cringed, tongue darting out between her lips as if her body wanted to spit the thing on the floor, but her manners managed to stay the impulse.

“That’s strong,” she remarked approvingly. “Lamedon?”

“Close,” the proprietor replied, impressed by the young lassie’s very good guess. “Lebennin - just don’t call ‘em South Gondor and they trade fair. ‘Course, I don’t hold much with the merchants of Men, that’s brought up on Ironfist ships. It’s said the beans are roasted by dwarrow hands, but you never know with merchants, do you?”

“Whoever did the roasting, they were fine hands indeed,” Halldóra stated. “I’ll take it.”

The dwarf nodded and turned to Fundin. “Same for you m’lad?” he asked, smirking behind his beard. “Or something milder?”

The entire conversation up until that point left Fundin feeling bewildered. Coffee was...coffee, wasn’t it? Grown in tropical lands far away, shipped in and drunk to wake you of a morning. He’d no idea that it was possible to be able to tell where it came from by taste or smell. It was all the same slop to him, dark, bitter, and mildly unpleasant.

“Er...the same,” he said after an awkward pause. As Halldóra hopped onto a chair near one of the thickly paned glass windows, Fundin found himself wondering if there was anything she did _not_ know.

“When do you think the rain will stop?” she asked, seemingly in answer to his unspoken question. Though that did not necessarily mean anything; if she could also predict the weather, she’d been no ordinary dwarf, but a witch of some sort and Fundin would have been hopelessly held in thrall, as warriors were in the stories.

“Can’t say,” he shrugged. The heat from the several fires made the shop almost too warm and left a fog on the cold glass. Idly, Fundin rubbed with his sleeve and squinted out onto the street. Folks were scrambling this way and that, trying to make it to homes and businesses before it picked up again. “Could be worse, could be on campaign and made to sleep in it.”

“Oh, that must be dreadful,” Halldóra said with a shiver. “That is, I’ve never _been_ on campaign, I’ve never passed a night out of doors in all my years, but I imagine it’s dreadful.”

“S’alright,” Fundin shrugged. He was not about to tell her that sleeping with two score comrades was better by far than lying in bed in cold, lifeless rooms by oneself, but he was thinking it. “Takes some getting used to, but after a few days there’s nothing strange about it. Marching in wet socks though, that’s...aye, dreadful, as you said.”

“I hope making camp isn’t some other fear you’re determined to break me of,” she said, eyes sparkling with mischief as their glasses were set upon the table, full to the brim of a brew that was black as ink and nearly as viscous. A small pitcher of cream and a cone of sugar were also placed between them, but Halldóra wrapped her hands around her glass and shook her head when Fundin gestured that she ought to go first. “Oh no, I don’t take anything in mine.”

With only the slightest bit of apprehension that he fervently hoped did not show on his face, Fundin too ignored the cream and sugar, instead taking a trepidatious sip when Halldóra raised her glass to her lips. He managed to swallow his scant, scalding mouthful, but evidently did not manage to keep his expression as impassive as he’d hoped.

Halldóra hid a smile behind the rim of her cup and pushed the cream toward him with the fingers of her free hand. “Go on,” she said encouragingly. “I promise I won’t think less of you.”

Fundin chuckled and shrugged. “You’re made of sterner stuff than I,” he said, shaving off half the sugar cone and pouring cream until the glass was almost overfull. The next sip was bearable.

“We all have different strengths,” she said in a would-be-serious voice, belied by the subtle upturn at the corners of her mouth. “Some can sleep out of doors and ride horses without fear. Others prefer a nasty cup of coffee of a night. Or several.”

“I’ll have you riding a horse without fear, they’re nothing at all to be wary of,” Fundin said confidently. “As for sleeping outside, _that_ isn’t for everyone, not with winter coming and all. Not on a night like this.”

“But you would, wouldn’t you?” she asked, interestedly. “If you’re on the road, you wouldn’t have a choice.”

“Fair point,” he nodded. “But we’re not...boulders, if we can we’ll find a cave to take shelter. Once we know there’s naught to worry about inside. ‘Specially in the mountains, all sorts of vile things take up in caves, goblins, trolls - I could die happy if I never see another troll, you can’t _do_ anything about them! Their hides are almost as tough as dragon scales, they’ll dull your axes long before you draw blood and no matter how hard you hit ‘em they’ll keep coming for you. Give me a goblin any day, they might be as spiders beneath the earth, but at least when you hit them they stay down.”

Halldóra was staring at him with a look of deepest admiration, very similar to the one he wore when she identified a coffee bean to one town over by its looks. “Trolls,” she breathed, awestruck. “You’ve defeated _trolls?”_

Taking another sip of his coffee and smiling bashfully, Fundin clarified, “Well, we got away, that’s the only victory that’s to be had with trolls, ‘less you manage to keep them fighting ‘til daylight, but we didn’t need to bother.”

Now that he cleared some space between his beverage and the top of his glass, he filled it up again with more cream and sugar and took another sip; almost pleasant. “They’re stupid, really,” he went on. “They can speak the Common Tongue, but their wits are slow. It’s easy to get them turned around in a melee or get them to arguing over who was going to have what share of the kill for supper and make a retreat while they’re occupied.”

The young scribe laughed merrily and Fundin was absurdly pleased with himself for prompting her laughter, though he did not think his tale was all _that_ funny. “Oh, that’s brilliant,” she grinned. “It’s just the same with scholars!”

This time, it was Fundin’s turn to laugh, but his was incredulous. “Trolls and scholars?” he repeated. “What can they have in common?”

“Distraction,” she confided, leaning across the table so close he could smell her breath, bitter from the coffee, with a hint of anise beneath it. He leaned closer, and Halldóra continued, “It’s awful when there are whose research runs along the same lines, they’ve always got their fingers in one another’s pies, requesting the same books, demanding the same manuscripts at the same time. It happens once a year at least, sometimes twice. And each thinks the other is receiving preferential treatment, so they’ll resort to bribes, but the trick is to get them talking about their research. Preferably to one another so while they argue, you can sneak away and hide in the stacks until they’ve either come to blows or gotten thrown out for being too loud.”

“I had no idea the library was so dangerous,” Fundin shook his head thoughtfully. “Hardly stepped foot there all my life and then I come to find out it’s worse than the high street on market day.”

He’d hoped to make her laugh again, but his words provoked the opposite effect. Halldóra’s lips parted slightly and she looked wounded. Licking her lips, she took another sip of her coffee and seemed to struggle to find an adequate response. “You’re...ah, not a...reader, then?”

There was a reason certain metaphors existed, Fundin realized then. For he could not have felt more uncomfortable had he actually removed his boot and attempted to stuff his entire left foot in his mouth. “Not...not really,” he said, gulping down half his coffee in one swallow. “I, er, find it a bit...daunting.”

“Daunting?” Halldóra almost laughed again, but seemed to think better of it and coughed into her hand instead. “You fight trolls and you think reading’s _daunting?”_

 _Fighting trolls is easy,_ Fundin thought to himself and bit his tongue and shrugged helplessly instead. _Just pick up a warhammer, wave it about, and then run like there’s flames licking at your boots._

When he made no response, Halldóra kept silent as well. There was a long stretch where neither spoke, just drank quietly, glancing at the frosted-over windows in a vain attempt to find some topic of mutual interest outside. There was none to be had - until a well-timed thunderclap rattled the walls and made Halldóra gasp in surprise. The rain fell harder now, pouring down in icy cold sheets, pounding against the walls and roof.

“Oh dear,” Halldóra said, rising up slightly to clean the glass as Fundin had done. “If this carries on, I’ll be late for Thráin’s tutoring.”

“How’s he doing?” Fundin asked, forgetting his prior vow not to drag his nephew into their outing as a conversation piece. “With Elvish, I mean. You mightn’t know it yet, but Dísa - Sigdís - my _sister’s_ rubbish with languages. Even her Common Tongue could use some polishing.”

“Oh, he’s doing perfectly well,” Halldóra replied reassuringly, brightening considerably at the change of topic. “He’s quite bright, you know, he only wants a bit of focus and Thráin is stubborn when it comes to learning about things he doesn’t believe he needs to know. I don’t think it’s the language it that has him stumped, his Sindarin is actually very good when written, he just has a bit of trouble with pronunciation. Naturally, he slides into emphasis that is common in Khuzdul and utterly foreign when speaking any of the Elvish tongues or dialects. If he was destined for the scriptorium, he would be an adequate translator.”

Fundin smirked, “If he didn’t have to talk to them, he’d be alright.”

“Exactly, but he has to speak with him - which is another thing I think he’s a bit stubborn about,” she nodded. “He has difficulty, as many do...oh, how shall I put this? Not...erm...openly sneering at Elven ways and customs.”

Now Fundin was laughing and nodding since he knew the _exact_ expression Halldóra was talking about. “Oh, aye,” he shook his head ruefully. “Thráin’s always been like that, came into the world with a scowl on his face and he’s determined to leave the same way. But he’ll need to learn to reign his temper and his scowls if he’s to go before Thranduil’s court, he’s haughty enough for the both of them.”

“I suppose when one’s lived a thousand lifetimes, one has the right to be a wee bit haughty,” Halldóra shrugged. “I’ve told him time and again that Elven Kings won’t be nearly so kindly to dwarrow princes rolling their eyes at them as I am. “

“I don’t think - ” Fundin began, about to say ‘I don’t think anyone’s kinder than you, Elvenking or nay,’ but was drowned out by a loud boom of thunder that rattled his glass upon the table. Halldóra shivered though the shop was as warm as it was when they came in the door. “Alright?”

“Fine,” she replied quickly, too quickly for him to believe her, but he said nothing about it.

Instead, Fundin turned his gaze toward the windows he could not see out of and remarked, “Doesn’t seem as it’ll be clear any time soon.”

Halldóra too squinted out at the sheets of water she could hear, but not see behind the fogged glass. “I suppose not,” she sighed lightly. “We’ll just have to skip the lesson today; no doubt Thráin’s overjoyed.”

* * *

Thráin was not overjoyed. Thráin was wet. Thráin was cold. Thráin’s fingers were numb from digging into his reluctant companion’s arm to ensure that Óin did not go running back to Erebor at the first opportunity. Thráin was many things; joyful was not one of them.

The rain did not seem able to make up its mind; one minute it fell in hard sheets that soaked the back of his neck even though he had his hood up and the next it was an icy mist all around him. Thráin might have borne that with gritty determination had Óin not spent the last quarter of an hour whinging at him louder than the howling wind.

“Let’s turn _back_ ,” he moaned, huddling closer to Thráin that he might share his cloak. “Never mind saving Fundin from frostbite, I’m wearing my teeth to the nubs for chattering!”

“We’re closer to Dale than we are the Mountain,” Thráin replied. The sun was setting behind the clouds and it grew darker by the minute; if they stayed out much longer they would hardly be able to see anything and the lamps of Dale were only half-lit, flames sputtering and dying in the wet. “Only a bit farther.”

“You owe me,” Óin said. “Just you wait - if you don’t make this up to me someday soon, remember: I know where they keep the leeches. Fatter than two of your fingers together and that’s before they get to sucking. Packed in by the thousands in glass jars bigger than your head. And I know where you sleep.”

When Thráin shivered, he told himself it was just the cold.

By the time they reached the town proper, the rain was taking a brief respite from pelting angrily down from the sky. Thráin put his hood down and loosened his hold on Óin’s arm so he could wriggled his fingers and get some blood back in his hand. His cousin took the opportunity to rip the cloak from his shoulders and swing it around his own.

With a cry of dismay, Thráin objected, “It’s not even _raining_ anymore!”

“I’m wearing it on the way back,” Óin informed him. When his cousin opened his mouth to argue the point, he drew himself up and glared at Thráin, hard and uncompromising, over the end of his nose, hissing, _”Leeches.”_

Thráin had no further objections to make on the matter. In fact, he was uncertain how to proceed. They hadn’t seen any sign of his uncle or his tutor on the road so unless they became utterly witless in a storm and had either gone to Dale or retreated toward Erebor using something other than the main road to town, he was not sure what they were meant to do now. Óin’s arms were folding and he was staring at Thráin with mingled expectation and irritation.

Just as Thráin was about to admit his own uncertainty, a timely flash of lightning that split the sky and illuminated the streets clear as day saved him from embarrassing himself. Well, saved him from embarrassing himself from admitting weakness; the yelp and his jumping up off the ground and straight _into_ Óin was embarrassment of a different sort.

This time it was Óin’s turn to grasp Thráin’s arm and pull him into the doorway of a nearby shop. “Have you got any money?” he asked at last. “If we buy something, the shopkeep’ll let us wait out the worst of it.”

“I haven’t,” Thráin said, feeling the statement was absurd. He was the crown prince, there were _rooms_ in Erebor filled with gold and silver, priceless jewels and artifacts from bygone Ages. But that was all sealed within the Mountain and he hadn’t taken any spending money with him when he set off on this impromptu adventure. To be quite honest, he was not actually permitted to go to town without accompaniment and Óin was not what his parents had mind when they told their son he needed an older chaperone on outings.

It was only a temporary lapse. Once they found Fundin and Halldóra, both of whom were perfectly adequate chaperones in their own rights, all would be very much on the up and up. _If_ they found them. For they could be anywhere, Dale was not as grand as Erebor, but it was a sizeable city and there were shops aplenty lining the streets, they might be huddled in any one of the many alleyways running with frigid water -

“What are you two _doing_ here?”

Or he might be behind them, grabbing them by their collars and forcibly hurling them into the shop they were huddled before.

Óin wasted no time assigning blame. The sight of his uncle, warm, safe and _dry_ threatened to bring on apoplexy in the dwarfling. “This was all Thráin’s doing, I wanted no part of it!” he insisted, pointing an accusatory finger at his cousin. “When Miss Halldóra didn’t turn up for his lesson, he got it in his head you were lost or drowned or _dying_ which would have been _daft_ and he didn’t want your reputations to get dragged through the muck if the Mountain Guard had to be rallied to find you.”

“Oh!” Halldóra herself drew close to them, removing a handkerchief from her inner pockets and mopping at Thráin’s dripping wet face with it. He was too humiliated to even ask her to stop; put Óin’s way in the cozy little tea shop it did sound absurd. “If I thought you’d be that worried, I’d have made an effort to come back, rain or no! I thought you’d be pleased, Thráin dear.”

Thráin paid her words little mind and just frowned at the floor. Fundin cocked his head at his nephews, torn between being firm or kind. They did look awfully pathetic in their sopping wet clothes, like drowned rats more than anything.

“This calls for tea,” Halldóra said with a decisive nod, before he’d made up his mind to chide or not. “Neither of you lads are fond of cake, are you?”

“I could do,” Óin replied immediately and elbowed Thráin in the arm to prompt him to lift his head. “And so could he, we’ve neither of us had supper.”

“Two slices of spice cake?” the dwarf behind the counter queried. “I’ve just the thing for hungry lads, full to bursting with figs and walnuts.”

“Four, if you don’t mind,” Fundin replied, digging around in his money purse for the sum. “And two more glasses of coffee, if you’ve got it.”

“I have,” he nodded. “Take the table by the fire, won’t be a minute.”

In between bites of cake, the boys recounted the tale of their brief excursion to their bemused elders who drank coffee and tried not to laugh at them too much. Halldóra failed in that attempt when they got to the part about Óin threatening to hide leeches in his cousin’s bed if he did not let him wear his cloak. Fundin was not long to follow her in laughter and though Óin and Thráin attempted to maintain their dignity, they soon wore identical abashed grins.

“He didn’t give me time to fetch mine before he was tearing out of the gate!” Óin explained.

“Well, you’ve a better mind than I have,” Halldóra reached out and patted his arm. “I didn’t even remember to _bring_ mine and your uncle was kind enough to give me use of his own.”

Thráin raised both eyebrows at Fundin, “What’d she threaten _you_ with?”

“Not a thing,” Halldóra swatted at her pupil. “Your uncle’s a perfect gallant, you could learn something from him.”

Fundin’s grin did not completely fade until long after the sky outside darkened and, rain or no rain, they were forced to bid the shopkeeper a good night and make the return journey home.

“What I don’t understand,” Fundin remarked, walking slowly to match his steps with Halldóra and Thráin who were both seeking shelter under his cloak, “is how you sneaked past the Guard.”

“Oh, that was easy,” Thráin replied dismissively. “They’re big, we’re little - ”

“Speak for yourself,” Óin muttered.

“It didn’t take much sneaking. Anyway, they’re more concerned with keeping outsiders _out_ rather than holding dwarves _in.”_

There was logic in that statement, but Fundin was quite certain that his sister would be giving the Guard an earful if she ever caught wind of the fact that her young son and nephew managed to make it all the way from Erebor to Dale without a single soul noting their departure. Nor was much made of their return; Fundin and Halldóra were entirely suitable chaperones, after all.

Halldóra stepped away from Fundin, tucking wet locks of hair back into her braids as best she could. “That was...not what I expected,” she said, looking up at him shyly, but she was smiling. “The rain I mean. I had a lovely evening otherwise.”

“Me too,” Fundin said honestly, smiling down at her. Beside him, Thráin shook out his hair like a wet dog, pelting him with water droplets. “Er...we should do that again. Sometime. Without the rain.”

“Without the rain, definitely. Hot baths all around, I should think.” Tearing her eyes away from Fundin she smiled at his nephews, “It was very nice to meet you, Óin.”

The dwarfling grunted, unclasping Thráin’s cloak and throwing it over his cousin’s head. “You too miss,” he said, sidestepping a blind punch from his cousin.

“Oh, call me Dóra,” she insisted, glancing up at Fundin again as she stepped forward and helped detangle Thráin from his own cloak. “Nearly everyone does - and I’ll see you for our next lesson.”

“I expect so,” Thráin nodded, turning away from her for just a moment to land a solid punch on Óin’s arm, which his cousin returned by tackling him to the stone floor.

“Well,” Halldóra said, looking between the children pummeling one another at her feet and Fundin who was already bending to pry them apart. “Good night.”

“‘Night,” Fundin replied, in the same breath scolding his nephews, “come along, you two, enough of that!”

It was only a half-hearted bout since both dwarflings were rather tired after their long walk. Óin bade both uncle and cousin good evening, wiggling his fingers threateningly at Thráin before he slunk off to his family’s apartments, boots squelching with every soggy step.

Fundin remained in the receiving hall another moment long, wringing out the sodden edge of his cloak and causing a minor flood. Thráin remained by his side, staring up at his uncle with confusion writ all over his face. “That’s it?” he inquired.

“What’s it?” Fundin asked, giving the cloak a rough shake and not-so-accidentally spraying his nephew with water. He could not precisely define the expression Thráin wore, but it felt uncomfortably like judgment.

Thráin wiped at his face with a scowl. “I thought you were meant to...to _kiss_ her or summat,” he explained, pulling his mouth down in disgust at the thought. “That’s how it happens in the theatre.”

“I suppose it does,” Fundin replied after a momentary silence. He could not deny that it would have been very nice to kiss Halldóra - at least, he thought so, having very little experience of kissing anyone in his life thus far - but the time never seemed quite right. Then again, the cue to kiss in theatricals was usually in the aftermath of a great battle while one of the lovers was bleeding out, accompanied by a swelling orchestral score.

It wasn’t as though they were being followed by a band of roving musicians who could tell him when the time was right for such things.

Thráin was still looking up at him expectantly. “So why didn’t you? Just to get it over with?”

“I don’t know,” Fundin replied honestly. “Probably because there’s not a play I’ve seen that includes a chorus of two bratlings who come along in the third act, threw me off a bit.” Then, with a sharp incline of his head, added, “Let’s get you home before your parents miss you - we don’t want this turning from romance to tragedy, do we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has taken on a mind of its own. The actions of the characters are no longer in my complete control, I don't know if this is a good thing or not. The location of coffee (and, by association, chocolate) cultivation and trade is based on my pitiful understanding of ME geography and the potential for all the best of foodstuffs existing in Harad to be shipped out by merchants to the less naturally delicious North. **unexpectedmoose** on tumblr has some awesome headcanons regarding dwarf merchant sailors and Orocarni dwarves in general that also informed some of Halldóra's hipster coffee snobbery in this chapter ;-)


	11. Chapter Ten

_Scholars have one advantage over trolls,_ Halldóra thought, tucking the stack of books in her arms under her chin to steady them. _They don’t retreat with the coming of the dawn._

There were a few she was prepared to lay down money on the odds that they were made of stone. She could swear that Blacklock dwarrowdam had not budged from her study carrel in all the time Halldóra had been on patrol in the reading room. Oh, aye, Haldr called it ‘patrol,’ collecting the books that they were through with for either placing back on reserve for the next dwarf who wanted it or placing it upon a cart for the apprentices to file back in with the rest of the collection.

It was a dull, tedious business and she suspected she was being punished for something, but she could not imagine what - oh. Perhaps it was the singing. Blushing, she recalled that she’d been carrying on quite loudly as she left her sodden things in the bath to drip themselves dry. Or perhaps it was only that she had been careless with her laundry and he’d wanted a soak. He might have _told_ her, but Haldr did have that rule about ‘No talking after supper,’ when the scholars were under the mountain.

Still, he might have left her a note rather than tasking her with circling the room endlessly, keeping an eye out for dwarves who worked with their elbows too close to their ink pots or else thought the texts might be improved with the addition of marginalia of their own devising. The worst of all were the food smugglers. It was why she was keeping a particular eye on the Blacklock, _no one_ could remain in one place for six hours at a stretch without something to nibble on.

“Back to the vaults,” Halldóra informed Gilla, whose head snapped up from where it had been nodding behind the desk.

“What?” the librarian asked, blinking owlishly behind her spectacles. Dóra pushed the stack closer to her and she suddenly seemed to remember where they were and what she was meant to be doing. “Oh. Right. Books on shelves.”

“Books on shelves,” Dóra nodded, squinting up at her critically. “I could relieve you if you’d like.”

“Oh, could you?” Gilla asked, relief plain in her voice. “I was running behind this morning and didn’t have time to brew any coffee, I’ll put the kettle on and bring you a cup.”

“That sounds as fair a trade as I’ve ever heard,” Dóra let herself in to the area behind the desk, sliding a hidden latch beneath the lip that jutted out a few inches on Gilla’s side. It was a few steps up, this particular desk was on a raised platform to better overlook the reading room. She’d had a cup of coffee already that morning, but another surely would not go amiss; better jittery and alert than sluggish and sleepy. “Go on, I’ll put them on the cart myself - and on your way out,” she added this last quietly, glancing over at the suspected smuggler in the corner, “make sure you pass by _her_ table. Crumbs, you know.”

Gilla nodded deliberately and pursed her lips as she followed Halldóra’s line of vision. “It wouldn’t kill them to make a trek to the kitchens,” she muttered as she walked away. “The books aren’t likely to grow legs and wander off…”

Halldóra made a little hum of agreement and shooed Gilla off in the general direction of her office while she attempted to match slips to books. The library was run on a system whereby each volume that was sturdy enough to bear it had a slip placed between its pages which gave the title, author attribution (if any) and volume if it was one of a set. Those slips were removed when the book was in the possession of a borrower and saved behind the desk to be reinserted upon its return. There was also a ledger in which the name of the scholar and the length of time they were allotted with the volume was recorded for each calendar year. It was both an excellent system of record-keeping and a useful way of tracking down those borrowers who did not pay special mind to dates.

Overkill, perhaps, but Haldr insisted upon keeping a record of those who borrowed the materials, the Clan they hailed from, and exactly where within the mountain they were staying during their visit. Unbeknownst to the scholars he also kept a log of all of their infractions, from eating to staining books and manuscripts or returning materials late or damaged. It usually only took one reprimand to make Haldr’s devotion to the integrity of the collection and the rules that governed its use clear.

Eight years ago, one dwarf from the Stonefoot Clan who was particularly negligent about returning what was lent to him woke in his quarters to find Haldr standing over him, torch held dangerously close to the bedclothes, as he inquired whether or not _now_ was a convenient time to make a search for the missing items. Her brother returned to their rooms triumphant and woke Halldóra specifically to tell her that every single one of the errant books was now safely shelved where they belonged.

Halldóra finished recording the return of a copy of Durin III’s _Visions and Prophecies_ to the shelving cart when one of the apprentices skipped over to take the lot away. Then it was back to her primary task, balancing her chin on her hand and lazily sweeping her eyes around the room. Everyone appeared to be on their best behavior and the apprentices walked this way and that, bearing books, pushing carts, so she allowed herself to fall into a daydream.

A very pleasant daydream it was too, all about Fundin. To avoid blushing red at the desk she tried to confine her thoughts solely to the pleasant rumble of his voice, the way his eyes looked when he smiled, but she could not help recalling the way his sodden tunic clung to his arms in the rain, thick with muscle beneath the fabric and warm too; she remembered sitting flush against his side as they rested beneath the rocky outcropping waiting for the rain to stop. All of him had been warm, from his strong arms, to his hands, calloused from forge-work and weapons-training. They were so big she honestly thought that if he wrapped them around her waist, his fingers might nearly touch.

 _That_ led to yet more distracting thoughts about his hands on her waist, how warm they’d be through her shirt, how rough they’d feel on her skin - and then she sat up with a start when someone waved their hands impatiently before her eyes.

“Er, oh, dear,” she stammered, flustered. The entire place might have been burning around her and she would have sat there and gone up in flames with it, she’d been a thousand miles away in her thoughts.

The red-haired Broadbeam she’d run over with the cart was tapping his foot impatiently, but smiled at her and eagerly inquired, “Has my book come back? The one I asked you about?”

Dóra stared at him blankly. She had been asked about hundreds of books between his first inquiry and the present day, how could she be expected to remember what he wanted specifically. “...could be,” she replied cautiously, reaching for the ledger. “Which one was it?”

“The prophecies of Durin III,” he informed her, slowly, as if she had forgotten the Common Tongue. “Remember? You told me you would inform me when it was returned.”

 _I said no such thing,_ Halldóra thought, but did not say as she buried her nose in the ledger, skipping forward to the recent returns. She remembered the fall she’d taken over him better than the conversation, but she knew without a doubt that she had not made any promise to that scholar because she would never make such a promise to _any_ scholar. If she did, she would spend all of her time running all over the mountain seeking dwarves out and she simply did not have the time for that. “Oh, here it is, returned this afternoon, it should be back on the shelf, I’ll summon an apprentice to fetch it for you.”

The Broadbeam’s face fell. “You mean you didn’t hold it for me?” he asked, dismayed. “I thought we had an understanding. It is _terribly_ important that I have that book.”

“Well, you will have it,” Dóra told him, trying to catch the eye of one of the endlessly circling apprentices. Fortunately Elísif was on her way in and she jerked her head to make her come closer. “In a minute or two, I didn’t see that you’d reserved it.”

“I didn’t quite,” he admitted. “I thought, once I’d filled out the initial forms that you would take care of everything else for me.”

Halldóra schooled her features into an expression of sympathy, “That’s not exactly how it - ”

“You see,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken a word, “I’ve managed to find an interesting correlation between the conflict between the Slaying of King Thingol and the alliance between Durin III and Celebrimbor that I believe will put the Invasion of Eriador into a new light which in turn reveals startling new implication about the outcome of the Siege of Barad-dûr. It’s an angle no one has examined before, to my knowledge.”

 _Probably because it doesn’t make any sense,_ Dóra thought and said, “Oh, how interesting.”

It was a stock answer, which some took as a cue to keep the subject of their research to themselves and others interpreted as an invitation to speak on. The Broadbeam was one of the latter types. “It’s why I’ve need of that book, y’see. I’ve come across several references to a dream of Durin III’s which he recorded prior to his assumption of the throne. Just references, naturally, I assumed a Longbeard library would have it in its entirety, if only I could get my _hands_ on it - ”

“In just a minute, you surely shall,” Dóra smiled brightly. “Elís, could you nip off to the stacks and retrieve Durin III’s _Visions_ and bring it back here - ”

“It would’ve been less work for you if you’d held it for me,” the Broadbeam said, leaning his arm upon the desk conspiratorially. “Sent a note to my rooms, something, could you do that if I’ve need of another item?”

“I’m afraid we really don’t - ”

“Well, obviously not for _everyone_ , but if an exception could be made in my - ”

Elís was standing just behind the Broadbeam making the most distracting faces. Halldóra bit back a smile and took a half-step away from him, “I’m afraid I _really_ couldn’t - ”

“Just take down my name,” he insisted, hands on the desk, pulling himself up so they were eye-level. “It’s Boldi, son of - go on, take up your quill, I’m sure you could find a way round - ”

The book of prophecies landed on the table with a thump. “She could not,” Haldr said, sneaking up and startling them all. In one motion he had the book’s slip out and flipped the ledger open, looking at the dwarf over the top of his spectacles expectantly. “Boldi, son of…”

Halldóra was about to scurry away and busy herself doing _anything_ other than listening to Boldi talk about his ludicrous thesis, but Haldr grabbed her by the elbow with his hand that was not occupied in writing.

“As my sister was saying,” he informed Boldi, “You either get in the queue or you try your luck at the desk. There are no exceptions made under any circumstance for anyone.”

There was a peculiar manic gleam that Haldr developed when he’d gone too long without proper sustenance - meaning some form of nourishment that wasn’t either whiskey or coffee - and Boldi did not press the issue with him. He took the book, inclined his head respectfully and made a point to pause and smile at Halldóra who, with her arm still tight in her brother’s grip, only managed a grimace in return.

One Boldi was gone to study his prophecies Halldóra tried pulling away, but Haldr held her fast and nodded once at the apprentice who still stood nearby, trying and failing to hide her giggles in her sleeve. “Elís, watch the desk,” Haldr ordered.

The dwarfling ceased her laughter entirely. “Me?” she squeaked, looking wildly around.

“You,” Haldr confirmed. “I want a word with my sister. You can’t give that sort hope, best to nip their optimism in the bud at the first sign, it’s easier that way.”

“I wasn’t giving him hope of any kind,” Halldóra denied, but Haldr was already stalking off, dragging her behind him. They passed Gilla on their way to his office, she was kind enough to press a steaming mug of coffee into Halldóra’s free hand before Haldr got her into his office.

Released when he shut the door, Halldóra frowned at her brother and huffed, “I was _not_ giving him hope, I was all denial, he had hope anyway.”

“Oh, I know,” Haldr said, raising an eyebrow at her in a condescending way. “I just wanted to talk to you and I knew fewer interruptions would be made if it looked like I was going to scold you. The Iron Hills delegation are here.”

“Are they?” Dóra asked, surprised. She hadn’t noticed a marked increase in the number of scholars in the library, she must have spent more time lost in daydreams than she realized.

Haldr rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “You know what they’re like: They eat first and then descend on us afterward. Are you occupied tonight or are you willing to make camp in the stacks?”

 _I hope making camp isn’t some other fear you’re determined to break me of._ Oh, he flinched so _charmingly_ when he drank his coffee. The watering eyes only made them look more blue…

“What?” she asked when Haldr cleared his throat. “What was the question?”

“Can you take another shift in the reading room before supper?”

Halldóra shook her head in the negative. “Can’t, I’ve got a session with Thráin tonight.”

Haldr snorted, unsympathetically, “If that lad’s not making progress by now, I’d give it up as a loss. Didn’t you see him last evening?”

“He _is_ making progress and I didn’t see him last night, I got caught in the rain I had a...an outing, if you must know,” she said, drawing herself up a little when her brother’s look of annoyance slid into an expression of slack-jawed incredulity. “I do go out!”

“Do you?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. “I hadn’t noticed. But as I was saying, we’ll be put upon by Grór’s travel-weary subjects this evening and already we’ve been inundated - they’ve brought the correspondence with them.”

Two thick envelopes lay upon his desk and Haldr pretended to study them for a moment, then handed the thicker of the two to her. “A missive from dear Amad, for the favored child.”

“Oh, stop,” Dóra chided him, taking her envelope. “Where’s your letter opener?”

“In my hand,” he responded, twirling the little silver tool between his fingers of one hand while he brandished the thin package with the other. “Let’s see what scraps have been offered to the estranged son. Awfully thick for the bi-annual note relating the fact that the hag still lives.”

 _”Haldr._ You’re being horrible.”

“I am horrible,” he pointed out, slitting the top of the envelope open carelessly. “Or didn’t you read the last note? Ah.” One small slip of paper fell off of the folded parchment sheaf that made up the bulk of the envelope’s contents. Haldr’s eyes scanned it quickly and he handed it to his sister to peruse. “A list of her favorites and their little projects along with items they might require. She hopes they will be given all due accommodations. Your turn.”

Without ceremony, the entire stack was thrown onto the fire where it smoked as the pages began to curl in the heat. Deftly, he threw the letter opener at Halldóra who caught it by the handle. She took slightly more care in opening her own envelope, it had not been nearly so long since she’d heard from her mother.

They communicated regularly, confining their conversation generally to matters academic, currently they were involved in a dissection of Noldorin poem but Halldóra did manage to include an addendum in her last letter about her new position at court. It seemed like the sort of thing one told one’s mother. Truthfully, she was hoping for a rather more effusive reaction than Haldr’s dismayed questions, “But that won’t be _all_ the time? You’re not sacrificing the library, are you?”

The envelope contained crisp new parchment, with the poem itself copied out in a sure hand. Halldóra smiled at that, laying it aside. It proceeded with her mother’s own interpretation and additional commentary - and concluded thus:

**As regards your new post, mentioned in your last missive, I can hardly imagine how you expect me to respond. Or, if my initial supposition was correct, I am afraid I must disappoint you for you deserve neither praise for its acquisition, nor censure. It reflects nothing of your skill to have been so elevated, merely the disorderly nature of the court you serve. Grór’s premiere court scribe has done his duty this past seventy years and ascended to the position upon the death of his father. Think of that before you become too pleased with yourself.**

**I remain, your affectionate mother, etc.**

Haldr had come around the desk to read over his sister’s shoulder. They regularly exchanged the letters they received from her, usually gave him a good laugh. The utter dismissal left him frowning and the way his sister’s shoulders slumped and her brow wrinkled had him huffing and commenting sarcastically, “Affectionate? That’s a nice touch.”

He managed to restrain himself from spitting upon the letter and his sister folded it quietly and placed in her pocket. “Well, she was very thorough parsing the poem,” she said with false cheer. “That was very considerate. She’s so busy.”

Haldr could think of words other than ‘busy’ to describe his mother, but rightly concluded that his sister did not want to hear it. “When are you to meet the prince?” he asked.

“Soon,” she said, rousing herself from her disappointment. “I should eat something first - and so should you, you’re grumpy when you haven’t eaten.”

“I have coffee,” Haldr replied defensively.

“How about something solid?”

“Bread,” he offered after a moment of consideration.

“And…” Dóra prompted, but Haldr’s hands were at the small of her back, pushing her toward the door.

“Bread,” he nodded. “Off you go.”

With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, Halldóra seemed ready to bid her brother good day, but she paused halfway out the door. “If I ever have children,” she spoke up suddenly. “I’ll always tell them how proud I am of them, every day, even if they laughed at me. I’d rather they believe me partial than doubt that they’re worthy of praise.”

Haldr was left staring for a long moment after she left. By the time he roused himself enough to run to the door and shout, “Dóra! _Who_ did you say you had an outing with?”

* * *

“So, what did you think?” Halldóra asked Thráin. They did not have chairs to sit on, or a table, but she had a package of toffees wrapped in wax paper that he eagerly tucked into and made no comment about the state of the office while he had his mouth full.  
Thráin made a sour face that belied the sweetness of the toffees. “Stupid,” he concluded, once he unstuck his teeth.

“Ey!” Halldóra looked up sharply and frowned. “What have I said about using that word?”

“Not me,” her student clarified. “ _Her._ The elvenwoman. And her...whatever he was.”

“Lover?”

Thráin would have gagged at the word if he wasn’t so careful not to spit out his mouthful of sweets. Swallowing, he pulled another face and said, “Don’t say that word, I don’t like it. Everything about it was stupid, I don’t know what the Elvenfolk see in it. I thought they were both stark-raving mad, a magic cloak made of _hair?_ Why didn’t she just bring a good hard axe, it would’ve taken less time! And why’d Beren even bother trying to get the jewels for her father if it meant his death in the fetching? Find yourself another girl!”

“She was the fairest elvenmaid in all the world,” Dóra offered, trying with all her might not to laugh at Thráin’s outrage. “Lúthien Tinúviel. With her night-dark hair and moon-pale skin and voice that hastened the coming of spring.”

“That’s just poetic nonsense,” Thráin complained, leafing through the book, no longer caring whether or not the pages tore. “Springtime would come whether she sang or not - and what sort was he meant to be, skulking in bushes trying to touch her? _’He blindly groped across the glade / to the dark trees’ encircling shade / and, while she watched with veiled eyes, / touched her soft arm in sweet surprise.’_ Introduce yourself, at least! He’s lucky she didn’t strike him!”

“Your accent was very good there,” his tutor spoke encouragingly, unable to keep the laughter from her voice. “Did you like the part where they fought the werewolves?”

Thráin shrugged, “That was alright, but it was a waste, wasn’t it? In the end, they both _died.”_

Halldóra was unsure what response she could make to that very accurate summary of the tale’s end. “Mortal creatures tend to do just that, dear,” she said, smiling.

Thráin favored her with one of his very impressive eye-rolls. “ _She_ didn’t have to, not the first time. _Fading._ Nonsense, all of it - _Dwarves_ don’t fade.”

“Roan nearly died of grief for his Beloved,” Halldóra reminded him, her tone quite mild. “And don’t tell me _that’s_ a tale you don’t know by heart.”

“‘Course I know it,’ he scoffed, taking another toffee. “And Roan didn’t fade away, he starved himself. It’s different. And before you talk about how his Beloved died and came back, _she_ didn’t fade either, she froze to death. It’s not the same thing in the slightest.”

Many great literary scholars begged to differ - at least five were currently under the Mountain, debating the subtle nuances in their treatises on the theme of sacrifice and divine mercy in both _The Lay of Leithian_ and _The Song of Roan and the Beloved of Stone_. Halldóra decided not to mention it; she had a feeling Thráin would not be impressed.

He was looking at her in a very cross and curious manner. Thráin could be a suspicious young dwarfling and he was beginning to suspect that Halldóra had different reasons for assigning him that particular poem than a sadistic streak.

Despite prodding, Thráin refused to give much more of his opinion about the piece, except for words he’d had trouble sounding out and phrases that did not flow together as they ought to, but emerged from his lips stuttering and awkward. He repeated after his tutor and by the end complained of a sore throat, between the talking and the sweets sucking his mouth dry of moisture. Dóra let him go without an assignment, saying that they would concentrate on his grammar and conversation next time.

It was too soon for supper and he worked in the forges all morning, so Thráin took himself back to his rooms where there were good books written in the Common Speech with tales of sensible sorts who, when faced with a problem, stood bravely against it armed with sword and shield. They didn’t sit in trees, growing their hair. He had to read that passage five times over before he accepted that he wasn’t translating it incorrectly.

The sitting room was occupied when he arrived, he recognized his mother’s broad shoulders and bent dark head, working on something probably. It occurred to him to ask what she thought of Miss Lúthien and her dancing, but he decided against it. His mother had probably never read it, she had better things to do.

Filled with a childish urge to announce his presence forcefully and without any dignity of which to speak, Thráin took off at a run and launched himself over the arm of the couch to land in an ungainly pile of limbs. It was a good thing his mother had quick reflexes; if she hadn’t been paying attention, he might have impaled himself on one of the knives that were laying in her lap.

Sigdís was aware of her surroundings at all times, it was a habit she couldn’t break, no matter how many years it had been since she’d gone on campaign. She was aware that Thráin had come into the room and was lurking somewhere behind her, but she did not look up from the dagger she was polishing. The only sign she gave that she was aware of his presence was moving her knives to a table a second before he flopped down upon the sofa beside her, with undue dramatics and force.

The sigh he emitted upon throwing himself against her side, she did not ignore, but neither did she cease working.

“Got something on your mind, little bear?” It was a nickname she’d set aside just for him since he’d begun to speak. Not because her son was particularly fearsome, but because he never stopped growling.

“Dwarves who get it in their heads to fall in love are stupid,” he informed her, trying to make himself more comfortable. It was a difficult job, his mother was all hard bone and powerful muscle beneath her clothes. Eventually she took pity on him and shrugged out of her coat, balling it up to serve as a pillow to rest his head upon. “They do stupid things and read stupid things and make everyone suffer along with them because they’re too caught up to think rationally.”

“Can’t say I disagree,” Dísa acknowledged. Really, some courting customs were just unnecessary. An exchange of gifts she could understand, as a prelude to the exchange of property, but serenading? Braiding one another’s hair by moonlight? “A lot of courting’s just a damnable waste of time.”

“Right,” Thráin nodded emphatically. “If they _must_ get married, it’s more sensible to do it how you and Adad went about it.”

Sigdís finally stilled her hands, fixing her hawk-like gaze on her son who seemed to have uttered those words utterly without guile. “And how’d we go about it? Seeing as how you weren’t there, I’m dying to know what you thought of the to-do.”

Thráin sensed he’d annoyed his mother, but was not sure how. “Well... you just did it,” he shrugged, idly kicking his legs up so that his boots rested comfortably upon the arm of the sofa. “Got married, had a baby. And kept all that love dross well out of it.”

There were very few things that made Sigdís feel completely flummoxed. Children, particularly her own son, comprised one category of things that could utterly disarm her. “Why that’s...I love your father,” she said lamely. Her tone was so shocked she hardly believed herself.

“No, you don’t,” Thráin countered evenly. He might have been talking about the composition of low-carat gold for all the feeling in his voice. It was the tone of a schoolmaster making a necessary correction of a student about a commonplace, but ultimately unimportant fact.

“I do!” his mother shot back with more feeling. Abandoning her knives, she looked down at her son and added, “Of _course_ I do, what’s brought this on?”

“Nothing’s brought it on,” Thráin replied carefully, wrinkling his nose in confusion. “I just didn’t think...you don’t say it. You don’t ever say it, not to him.”

That was very true, as a matter of fact, Dísa could not properly recall the last time the words ‘I love you,’ had left her mouth in Thrór’s presence. But just because her son was correct that his mother rarely told his father that she loved him, it did not follow that he was right about the rest of it. Honestly, whether she loved Thrór or not, she did not see how it was any of Thráin’s business. They both loved him and took care of him, he should be satisfied with that...but she could tell that he was waiting for an answer and in any case he was _wrong._

“It’s…” she began uncomfortably, never one to speak her heart aloud. “It’s...one of those things that runs so deep, you don’t need to say it. To say it sounds...cheap. Not cheap, I don’t mean cheap...undervalued, more like. They’re just words. Ma zatâbhyûrizu galabur, zatâbhyûrizu mohilur,* eh?”

That was a phrase hsd son ought to know by heart. She had it tattooed around both forearms, he used to trace the runes when she tried to get him to sleep nights when he was little.

It seemed Thráin hand not forgotten. He pushed the left sleeve of her tunic up and ran his fingers over the characters, stark and black beneath her skin. “You and Adad got married because you love each other, then?” he asked.

“Nay,” Dísa shook her head and clarified, “we love each other _and_ we got married. It’s not the same thing.”

The conversation was leaving Thráin even more perplexed than he had been when he settled down. “I don’t know that this love business is healthy,” he said at last. “Folks are forever dying of it, in stories.”

Dísa made a low sound of agreement, rumbling deep in her chest. “Aye, that’s often the way of it.”

“That’s why I say we should do away with the whole business,” Thráin declared. “Too dangerous and there’s dangers enough abroad as it is. Can’t add fading and near-drownings on top of it all, it isn’t wholesome.”

“Drownings?”

Thráin blanched, suddenly remembering that although his mother was an adventurous dwarf and had been so since she was his age, she would _not_ take well to learning that he had defied a direct order of hers. Even if, at the time, he thought the cause was sufficient.

“Supper?” he changed the subject with so little finesse that his mother’s expression changed from curious to suspicious and he sprang up from the sofa and made a mad dash for the door. Dísa was hot on his heels, she caught up to him in three long strides, but Thráin wrenched the door open - and found himself flush up against his father’s chest. Dísa managed to skid to a halt in time to prevent her son from being crushed between his parents.

“What a warm welcome!” Thrór beamed, catching Thráin around the shoulders and kissing him firmly on the top of the head. When his son did not act as he usually did, with a moan and an attempt to wriggle away, his brow furrowed and he looked up at his wife with a question in his eyes. Dísa looked away, mouth twisting severely. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“Supper!” Thráin informed him, slipping out from under his arm and jogging down the corridor. “I think I’ll sup with the apprentices tonight, if I can catch them, if that’s alright, I’ll see you before bed, goodbye!”

Thrór watched him go, but his wife was still frowning at the wall, not catching his gaze. “Sometimes I haven’t any idea what’s going on in that boy’s mind,” he remarked fondly.

“Don’t look at me,” Sigdís said shortly, though he hadn’t been. Her words prompted him to give her a once over, taking in the rigid line of her shoulders and her curled fists.

“Are you alright?” he asked, tilting his head up at her and trying to catch her eye.

Their gazes met and Dísa licked her lips, “I…” she began, but it felt ridiculous and wrong and _cheap_ , so she settled on saying, “I’m fine. Same as always.”

Ordinarily, Thrór might have pushed the issue, but they were only a few days out from their fight and he was in no mood to begin another one. “Good,” he nodded, with a sly grin. “I’m rather fond of you as you’ve always been, no point changing now. Supper?”

Dísa favored him with a lopsided grin that didn’t quite smooth the worry lines on her brow. “Supper,” she agreed, slinging an arm over her husband’s shoulders.

Thráin had gotten something right in his diatribe; falling in love was a fat load of nonsense. Dísa had never done anything so careless as that. She hadn’t fallen for anyone. She had loved Thrór as long as she’d known him and she’d known him all her life. Surely a love that deep and that long didn’t need to be spoken aloud. Thrór certainly wouldn’t think so. And so, that night, like so many nights that had come before it, she did not bother telling him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Disa's tattoos read (half on her right arm, half on her left) "Do not be wise in words, be wise in deeds," and the translation comes from The Dwarrow Scholar's Khuzdul-English Dictionary.
> 
> Horses in the next chapter? I think horses in the next chapter. Because we've already broken the rule about never ~~working~~ dating with children along for the ride, why not add animals to the mix? What could POSSIBLY go wrong? (Honestly, the horses will be the least of their problems.)


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** for minor **violence.** Specifically, one punch is thrown, but these are dwarves, they can take a hit without too much damage. We're taking a bit of a sharp left turn away from both the 'romantic' and 'comedy' action of this fic, but I promise I'll steer this thing back to cute before too long.

What did one wear when one was expected to ride a horse? It was a question that had been vexing Halldóra all morning and as the sun rose to its apex in the sky, high above the mountain, invisible to her eyes deep within, she finally had to come up with an answer.

Trousers, certainly, she supposed those she wore now were sufficient, a thick brown wool with a tight weave. Boots, too, probably and that was well taken care of for she’d laced hers on that morning when she took an early shift in the library, to make up for the hours she’d spent tutoring Thráin. Her bottom half was quite well shod and, all that she needed to do was address her top, it wouldn’t do to turn up to meet Fundin half naked; the days were turning colder, after all.  
  
When she agreed to take part in this excursion to the paddock, she had not thought much beyond the pleased look upon Fundin’s face, the way his sapphire eyes lit up. Frowning at her clothespress, she grew more apprehensive. She’d not been riding since she was a little girl, a _very_ little girl, so young that her mount had to be led about the paddock on a rope. The lack of independence mattered little to Halldóra; she clung to the horn of the saddle with white knuckles and, in a trembling voice, asked the dwarf leading the pony if she mightn’t get off and let another child have its turn, though hers was not yet over.

 _That_ part she remembered clearly, her throat was tight, her eyes were watering with panicked tears and the old dwarf took pity on her and handed her back to her father while the surrounding dwarflings cheered and surged forward, eager to be the next on horseback. Looking back, she was certain none of them spared a second thought about her, but at the time she was positive that every last one of them was laughing at her and she hadn’t gone near anything that walked on four legs since.

It must have been some long-ago amusement on Durin’s Day Eve, neither of her parents would have allowed for such pointless frivolity to cut into her lessons unless the day was a holiday.

In the end, Halldóra just replaced the densely embroidered dark emerald tunic she’d worn to work that morning and added a stiff-necked leather jerkin that was cut so long it nearly reached her knees. If she had time (which she never did) she would have dug around for a padded tunic to soften the impact when she was inevitably thrown. Or perhaps a helmet, though she wasn’t sure where she would find one. There were pillows in the sitting room and she briefly contemplated tying one of them to her bottom to act as a cushion, but dismissed the notion as silly in the extreme and anyway, she didn’t know if she had a length of string about.

The day was unusually warm and fine, the sky a clear blue save for the clouds that looked as fluffy as pillows stuffed with down. Appreciation for the scenery, particularly the way the leaves on the trees turned the thousand hues of flames and gemstones made her slow her steps to take the world in. Appreciation, that was what she told herself. Not apprehension.

She managed to keep up the facade just until she got close enough to the paddock to see Fundin - and more to the point the enormous black _creature_ towering above him. Despite his own great height, the top of Fundin’s head only stood just about level with the horse’s back. Halldora had no idea how he was even meant to get on the thing without a ladder, nevermind _her_.

Dwarves were hardy and strong, but not immune to all hurts of the body. One swift kick in the head would surely have her sprawled on the ground, if not knocked unconscious entirely. Oh, this was a bad idea, a terrible idea, why had she ever agreed to take part in such a mad scheme?

Too late to run, Fundin caught sight of her and _smiled_ , waving her over to him. Halldóra approached with caution, thinking that he seemed so very kind and polite, it never occurred to her that beneath that barrel chest there lurked the heart of a sadist.

“Come on,” he coaxed her closer, his voice sweet and gentle. She could almost believe he didn’t mean to see her trampled beneath the thing’s hooves. “He won’t bite.”

“But will he kick?” she asked nervously, twisting her hands together behind her back.

“Nah,” he shook his head. “Not unless you frighten him or come at him from behind, horses are nervous, I’ll grant, but not mean.”

Fundin reached up and stroked the thing’s neck like...well, Halldóra did not know what to compare the action to. Their kind did not keep many domesticated animals and she had certainly never before had cause to watch another dwarf interact tenderly with one of those creatures. It would have been heartwarming if she wasn’t so frightened.

Obviously she had been to the horse races, but she observed the riders from a safe distance in the box that had been in her family for generations. Haldr was the spendthrift of the two of them when it came to gambling, but she’d won and lost her fair share as well. The races were always a blur of movement, the tallest of their kind served as jockeys and rode animals as big and frightful as the mass of black before her, but she’d never been this close before and as much as she wanted to come closer to Fundin, his proximity to the animal stuck her feet firmly to the ground. She rocked forward on the balls of her feet, but could not advance a step.

Aware of her nerves, Fundin came to her, placing a hand warmly against her shoulder. “I promise he won’t harm you, he’s a gelding, doesn’t have the heat in his blood the stallions have, gentle as anything. He’s called Thistle.”

That made Halldóra smile despite herself. It was a little more difficult to be afraid of something that went by the name of ‘Thistle.’ She chanced a half a step and the horse did not roll its eyes or rear back, prepared to smash her head in. It stood before the fence that ran around the length of the paddock very sedately, in fact, as though it was truly harmless.

“Here,” Fundin said, reaching into his pockets and removing a small red apple and a pocket knife. “You’ll be fast friends if you feed him - horses are like dwarves that way - he’s fond of apples.”

“I’ve never seen anything less like a dwarf in all my life,” Halldóra declared, watching Fundin cut a piece off the apple. She accepted it when he held it out, eyeing the food and the creature dubiously.

Fundin chuckled in response, “Well, that’s where the similarities begin and end, I suppose. Dísa scolds me for bringing treats from my pockets, she says they’ll start nosing around in my clothes soon as I get near them, but Thistle knows to mind his manners. Just keep your fingers flat so he doesn’t nip them accidentally.”

Accidentally. Right. Dóra gathered all her courage and closed the gap between herself and the fence. Her right hand was stiff and rigid as a board as she raised the apple slice to the thing’s enormous mouth. Quick as blinkling, Thistle ducked his head and snatced the apple right off her hand, leaving her palm faintly went and cold. To her great embarrassment, Halldóra jumped backward, letting out an involuntary yipping sound.

“Well done!” Fundin praised her and she smiled trepidatiously at him. She had agreed to this mad lark, hadn’t she? And she’d been very close to the animal and it hadn’t attempted to trample or gore her, so perhaps she was not terribly mistaken in her earlier assessment of his character. “Ready to have a go?”

Or perhaps she was simply weak-willed when confronted with a pair of painfully earnest blue eyes. That was also a possibility.

“Erm…” Dóra began, realized she had no response to make that would satisfy either of them, and trailed off. “It’s only...the last time I was on horseback...or, ponyback, if that’s the more appropriate term, I haven’t any idea what the appropriate terminology is for these things I, er, became rather...well, I, er...cried. A little.”

“Oh.” At least he did not laugh at her. Quite the contrary, Fundin came up beside her, leaned upon the fence and stroked the horse’s nose contemplatively. “That’s a shame, how old were you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t think I was any more than twenty,” she said, scuffing the toe of her boot in the grass. “Silly, I know, to be nervous sixty years on, but - ”

“That’s not silly,” Fundin shook his head emphatically. “Not a bit, makes sense you’d still be nervy if the first and last time you rode you had a fright and never tried again.”

Dóra chanced a tired half-smile at him. “Never again,” she confirmed. “That’s what my father said almost to the word, ‘She won’t be doing _that_ again.’ He was probably relieved I hadn’t suddenly developed a desire to be a horsewoman, it would have disappointed him terribly.”

Fundin’s brow wrinkled slightly and his mouth turned down a little for reasons Halldóra could not fathom. “Hmm,” was the only reply he gave her and her face fell; very likely Fundin did think he foolish for being afraid when she was a child and carrying that fear with her to the present, only he was too polite to say so.

Uncomfortable, she folded her arms across her chest and waited for him to sigh and give the whole day up as a loss. It was on the tip of her tongue to apologize for wasting his time and for being such a coward, but then Fundin smiled at her and didn’t seem at all troubled by her reticence.

“Give his nose a pat,” he urged her. “I won’t ask you to mount him if you’d rather not, but I won’t have you leaving thinking all horses want to do you a harm. Hop up on the fence, I’ll be by you all the while, you haven’t anything to fear.”

The beast’s face had come in contact with her hand before with no ill consequence, so Halldóra thought that it was safe enough to hop up onto the middle rung of the fence, if only to avoid disappointing Fundin further. _Why_ she should be so concerned about disappointing Fundin was something she pondered as she hoisted herself up. She hated being a disappointment to anyone, that was the truth of it, but Fundin was...different, somehow.

At first, she’d wanted to spend time with him because he was handsome and one of the most well-regarded young warriors in the Guard. Fundin Farinul, the fearless giant of Erebor, who wouldn’t want to pass an evening at his side? But though she still thought him the handsomest dwarf Halldóra had ever laid eyes on and she admired his bravery and skill as she would any great warrior of their race, she discovered that there were other things about Fundin that she liked even more than his looks and his talent. She couldn’t put her finger on when she noticed it, maybe when he took that blow on the head leaving her office, or when he warmed her hands, or let her share his cloak, or was so sweet with his nephews or -

No, it wasn’t one thing. It was a thousand little gestures of kindness, expressions of good humor, indications of a generous and patient nature that made her reach out with a hand that only trembled slightly to give the horse a pat. True to his word, Fundin stayed right by her side, his hand hovering a hairsbreadth away to steady her on the fence. As if responding to some unspoken cue, Thistle lowered his great black head and tentatively, Halldóra’s fingers stroked his nose, her touch feather-light.

“There’s a good lad,” Fundin rumbled to the horse, reaching around her to stroke his neck. Halldóra gave Thisle a second pat, more confidently than she’d given the first. “Not so terrible, is he?”

Halldóra tilted her head and gave him another shy smile. “Not so terrible,” she agreed and was treated to a grin as broad and bright as the sun. Perched upon the fence the two were more of a height, although Fundin still topped her by a few inches. They were close, though. Close enough to -

A shrill whistle from further down the hill made Halldóra startled, she would have fallen off the fence if not for Fundin’s thoughtful hand at her back. She looked up to thank him once she regained her balance, but Fundin was staring at something coming up the hill toward them with a look of horror on his face. Thistle perked his ears up and trotted closer to where the sharp whistle originated from and Dóra followed his progress with her eyes, just in time to see to broad figures coming over the crest of the hill, black haired both, but the shorter of the two was much greyer.

Fundin gave the pair a half-hearted wave which was answered by the taller, who called to him in a booming voice, “What’re you doing by your lonesome? We were just going for a ride, d’you - oh, shite.”

Halldóra was sure she blushed from the tops of her toes to the apples of her cheeks when she recognized the King and Queen. Trying for some semblance of composure, she got down off the fence and made a hasty bow. King Thrór’s face lit up like a beacon and he jogged toward them, a half-second too quickly for his wife to grab his sleeve and stop him.

“Well, well, well,” he grinned at Fundin and Halldóra, looking delighted. “What a pleasant surprise!”

The peculiar emphasis he placed on the word _surprise_ prompted Fundin to raise his eyebrows and look at his sister suspiciously. “Is it?” he asked, voice raising and cracking in a way it hadn’t done since he was in his sixties.

“This was an accident,” Queen Sigdís replied immediately to Fundin. “I hadn’t any idea you’d be out here, you didn’t say a word about it in my hearing.”

 _“He_ didn’t, no,” Thrór agreed, then diverted his attention to Halldóra. “How are you doing this fine day, my dear girl? Is my brother-in-law giving you a riding lesson?”

Halldóra laughed cheerfully, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for the King Under the Mountain to stride up behind her and intrude upon a private moment with a lad. “I think the riding lesson comes after I’ve learnt to keep my knees from shaking when I come near a horse, sir,” she replied honestly.

“You’re afraid of horses?” Sigdís asked, both eyebrows raised. She clucked her tongue and shook her head when Halldóra nodded in the affirmative. “No need to be, they’re gentle if you don’t spook them - though, I’ll own they’re daft as anything so they’re easily spooked, aren’t you, you great big idiot?”

The last comment was directed at the horse, not Halldóra. Thistle did not seem to mind the insult, only lowered his head and nudged his nose against Sigdís chest. Dísa shot her little brother a knowing, annoyed look, “You been bringing him treats from your pockets again? How many times have I got to tell you, bring it in a feed bag.”

Fundin was just about to tell his sister to put her opinions in a feed bag and give them to the horse, but he refrained. As his sister and brother-in-law treated Halldóra to a lecture on the finer points of horsemanship, Fundin was left wondering who it was telling tales and sending Dísa and Thrór to spy on them. Loni? No, he wouldn’t dare, Fundin knew where he slept. Thráin made it abundantly clear that he wanted nothing at all to do with either himself or Halldóra beyond introducing them, though he _had_ stumbled into their evening at the coffeeshop rather unexpectedly. The only other soul who knew anything about his plans to take Halldóra riding (plans which were a spectacular failure) was Óin and _surely_ he had not -

“Stop hounding me!” Gróin, like his sister, was possessed of a voice that was best suited for the role of town crier and Fundin heard him long before he saw him. “Imagine if they’ve gone already, we’ll never catch them!”

“Catch them, for Durin’s sake, listen to yourself!” That was Maeva, her soft tones made shrill with irritation. “You’d think they were a pair of rabbits you wanted to snare. Leave him be!”

“Rabbits,” Gróin muttered. “What a rotten comparison to - oh. Ah. Well.”

This was easily the most horribly embarrassing moment of Fundin’s life. All of the other little indignities he ever suffered paled in comparison to being surrounded by his intrusive family while the girl he was sweet on looked between them and him with an expression of growing panic on her beautiful face.

That time he’d gone to spar in a pair of trousers that were getting too worn and small for him and he’d torn a hole right up the inseam? Hardly worth thinking of. Playing too roughly with an much younger Thráin after he’d eaten and washing the contents of his nephew’s supper out of his beard when he’d gotten sick? Hilarious in retrospect. Knocking over half of Halldóra’s books and cracking his head on her doorway the night they were formally introduced? That seemed an occasion of particular grace and dignity compared to the present moment. Even the _horse_ turned his back on them and began nibbling grass, obviously intent on ignoring the goings-on behind him.

“I tried to stop him!” Maeva announced, breathless. “Like a boulder down a hillside when he sets his mind to something.”

“Slippery as an eel this one,” Sigdís nodded at her husband, as if she had not been chattering Halldóra’s ear off seconds before about how getting the horse to move as you wanted it to was all in the legs. Grasping Thrór firmly around the upper arm like a child who lingered too long at games she tugged him toward the stables. “Come on, I thought we were riding.”

“And we’re leaving,” Maeva added, seizing Gróin by the wrist, but he shook her off of his arm with greater ease than Thrór dislodged Dísa.

“Just a moment,” he said, never taking his keen blue eyes off of Halldóra, who shrank back a little, seeming to become even smaller under Gróin’s stare. “So. Halldóra, daughter of Hallthór, is it?”

It took her a moment to find her voice, but answering questions was something Dóra excelled at and the skill did not desert her even in this moment of hardship. “Aye, sir,” she replied, evidently more wary of Gróin than she’d been of Thistle. “At-at your service.”

“Well met!” Maeva interjected brightly, redoubling her efforts to get her husband to come away with her, but Gróin’s feet were planted and he would not budge.

“And you’re a scribe.”

It was not phrased as a question, but the silence that followed indicated that the healer was expecting an answer.

“Aye,” Halldóra nodded again. “I am, sir. Though I, erm, have been known to spend some time aiding in the library. My brother’s head librarian, he inherited the position after my grandfather - ”

“When was it you gained your mastery?” he asked, foregoing niceties in favor of an interrogation.

Halldóra fidgeted, hands clasping and unclasping reflexively and nervously replied, “Five...five years ago?”

Gróin snorted, “Is that an answer or are you asking me?”

“Gróin!” Maeva and Thrór _and_ Sigdís shouted at once. Fundin was staring at his elder brother with his mouth open and his eyes wide with shock and not a little betrayal. What had come over him? Gróin could be prickly, but Fundin had never known his brother to be so blatantly rude with so little cause - nevermind that the subject of his ire was Halldóra, a girl who he was sure had never given anyone cause for rudeness in the whole of her life.

He actually had the gall to look offended. “What?” Gróin asked rhetorically. “I’m not entitled to ask a few questions of the girl?”

“Not like that you aren’t,” Thrór declared. Eyebrows drawing together in consternation he added to Halldóra, “Pay him no mind, lass, he’s usually not so...what’s the matter with you, anyway?”

“He hasn’t been sleeping well,” Maeva announced before her husband could get another word in. She addressed her comment to Halldóra, who seemed tense as a spring wound too tightly. “He acts like this when he doesn’t sleep, I’ll be sure to slip a draught of something into his ale tonight, I’m _very_ sorry about my husband’s conduct, my dear - ”

“It’s not for _you_ to be sorry,” Dísa shot at her sister-in-law. “It’s up to _him_ , an apology given by proxy is no apology.”

“I’ve nothing to apologize for!” Gróin thundered, pointing an accusatory finger at Halldóra. Trapped as she was by the fence at her back, Fundin to her left, Thrór to her right and Gróin right in front of her, she had no hope of escape. It was clear from the widening of her eyes and her convulsive swallowing that she was well aware of the fact. _”She_ crawls out of nowhere and suddenly _I’m_ the villain for wanting to make inquiries?”

“Why should you need to make inquiries?” Thrór demanded. “I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, she’s a perfectly - ”

“And I’ve told _you_ , you haven’t discerning taste,” Gróin snapped back. “It’s the reason dwarves like _her_ mother have taken themselves off to search for richer mines!”

“Gróin,” Sigdís snarled out, sounding positively dangerous. “If you don’t take that back right this _instant_ \- ”

“You’re no better than he is!” Gróin declared hotly. “Good minds for war, I won’t deny it, but you haven’t got an ounce of guile or shrewdness between you! And there’s _her_ , too much wit for her own good, so it’s said, comes of conniving stock, and you don’t question that? Gets herself in as court scribe not an hour after the post came up and wheedles herself into the boy’s good graces by the end of the day and none a one of you suspects she’s got her reasons for both?”

Fundin’s heart was pounding like a wardrum, he could hardly hear Gróin’s accusations for the thrumming of blood in his ears. Despite his strength and his training, he had never felt so helpless in all his days. Then, from below, he heard a wet sniffle, hastily stifled and when he glanced down he saw Halldóra brush her sleeve over her eyes.

If pressed later on, Fundin could not say when he moved or what he did or what curses he shouted, he was so blinded by fury. One moment he was standing by the paddock fence, wanting to fashion the wood into a stake and stab himself to death with it, the next he lunged forward and punched his elder brother - who he’d looked on as almost a father for just about as long as he could remember - square on the jaw. Gróin went down hard onto the ground and almost took Maeva down with him.

“You’ve no right, none at all, you don’t even _know_ her!” Fundin shouted as Gróin got to his feet, fingers prodding at his jaw. Tellingly, no one made a move to tug him to his feet.

 _“Neither do you!”_ Gróin shouted back, matching tone for deafening tone. “You’re a damned child, don’t know what’s good for you, I knew we never ought to have let you live in those rooms alone, not if you’re going to moon over the first girl who gives you a nice smile!”

“She’s not just any girl!” Fundin roared, whirling around, looking for her. “She’s...she’s…gone.”

And so she was. When Fundin lunged forward and dealt his brother the blow, Halldóra saw her avenue for escape and took it, running back toward the gate as fast as her legs could carry her. No one tried to stop her.

Upon seeing that Halldóra had vanished, had run away, all the fight went out of Fundin. He slumped against the fencepost with his head in his hands with a groan. Someone patted his shoulder, it was probably Thrór, he wasn’t about to look up and confirm the suspicion.

“I still say she’s smart as anything,” Dísa said, coming forward and hitting Gróin on the back of her head. “Knows when to retreat, ambushed and outnumbered, shows good battle sense. What were you thinking, you arse?”

“That was _low_ , Gróin,” Thrór shook his head in abject disapproval. “I’ll bear an insult against myself, but that lassie...you don’t know her. What’s she done to you?”

“Nothing,” Gróin gritted out. Either he was still angry or his teeth were clenched against the pain still radiating from his bruised jawbone. Probably a bit of both. “Not yet. I won’t see her work her machinations on Fundin, someone’s got to look out for the lad’s best interest. My wife told me - ”

“Don’t you dare,” Maeva shook her head, eyes narrowed and furious. “Don’t you _dare_ twist my words, don’t you _dare_ blame me for coming at that girl like a hammer on an anvil. I told you that Glóa said her mother was unfriendly, _you_ were the one who leapt to the worst possible conclusion.”

Gróin clenched his jaw harder, then gave a wince of pain. “Or the most rational,” he argued, despite the frustrated grunts and moans of his family. “We know the brother’s just this side of deranged and the mother’s some stone-hearted scholar who took herself away to serve Grór instead of her true king. It seems to me, I’m the only one being logical about all this - you all honestly believe she’s taken a shine to Fundin out of nowhere? What have they got in common, a scribe and a guardsman? _Nothing._ But does he have something she wants? Of course he does! Use your heads, she’s _using_ him, he’s a tool and when she’s done, she’ll take herself off to the Iron Hills with her mother, two stones hewn from the same rock.”

Fundin was slumped over, defeat written in his very posture and Gróin stopped speaking when his younger brother let out a shuddering sigh. In all honesty, he’d forgotten he was there. So much of his life was spent fretting over Fundin, trying to do right by Fundin, playing at being both parents when Dísa was away or simply overwhelmed that it was easy to talk over him, around him, as if he wasn’t there or was too young still to notice.

Fundin raised his eyes which were red-rimmed, though there were no tears on his face. Although he fixed his gaze upon his brother he didn’t look furious anymore. He looked wounded and that look, hurt mingled with deepest betrayal, hurt Gróin more than the blow he’d taken on the chin.

“I,” he began, but faltered, swallowing around a sudden lump in his throat. “I just meant to look after you, lad.”

“I don’t want you looking after me,” Fundin replied, voice low and trembling. He shook off Thrór’s hand on his arm and walked away from them, pausing only to address Gróin. “Don’t. Don’t seek me out, don’t _speak_ to me. I don’t even want to look at you.”

Fundin strode away from them, his long legs swallowing the distance between the paddock and the Mountain swiftly, but his heart felt as heavy as though it had been encased in lead, his mind was reeling. Ten minutes. In ten minutes he’d gone from spending a beautiful day, with the loveliest girl he’d ever known by his side, close enough to...close enough to…

And now it - whatever _it_ was, that warm, budding hope - was ruined, in shambles.

It never even occurred to him that his brother might be right, that this might be some scheme on Halldóra’s part. Not when she smiled at him so genuinely, not when she seemed so honestly delighted by his ridiculous nephews, not when she nodded and listened so patiently when Dísa and Thrór started boring her with riding talk. Not when it felt so _right_ and he felt so happy to be with her, to talk to her, to see her.

Somehow he made his way back to his home, though he did not recall the route he’d taken nor any familiar faces he’d seen in the passing. Unable to calm himself enough to sit, Fundin paced before the empty hearth, racking his brain, trying to think of some way, _any_ way to set things right.

As if it was fated, his eyes fell on the dusty cloth cover of the long overdue library book, tossed carelessly on a sideboard months ago and forgotten. Without any plan in mind, only an overwhelming urge to see her again and discover whether or not she hated him for his brother’s actions, Fundin took up the book, holding it tightly in his hand and set off for the library determined to find some way to make things right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knew it would come to this sooner or later, I feel like I can't write a single fic without saying: FREAKING DURINS. Luckily, we're dealing with Halldóra and Fundin. Unlike certain exiled kings we all know, he's not about to sit in his room convinced that his life has fallen apart and let his worries and doubts eat away at him. He's going to look for confirmation that his life has fallen apart and THEN be eaten away by worries and doubts.


	13. Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** For **mention** (not description) of **corporal punishment used on a child in an academic setting.**

The door of Sága’s office opened with nary a knock or a greeting. She looked up from the lessons she had been correcting to see Halldóra scuttle over to a chair, head hung, announcing herself with a suspiciously loud sniffle.

Before Sága could ask what beneath the earth had brought her pupil so low, Halldóra spoke, her voice high and trembling. “I know the last of the caravans have departed for the Iron Hills, but do you think it could be arranged to hire a traveling coach within...oh, the next hour or two? I’m sure the cost would be exorbitant, but that doesn’t matter, it’s only that I was thinking giving in to my mother’s requests for me to join her might be a good idea.”

The pronouncement so shocked Sága that her monocle fell from her face and swung, suspended by its chain, to her chest. Whatever happened must have been awful if it convinced Dóra that moving to live alongside her mother was the best alternative to facing her troubles. Sága and Dómarra had been colleagues once and although she would never deny her merit as a scholar, Sága - herself childness and perhaps unqualified to comment - could not speak so glowingly of her merit as a parent.

“What happened?” she asked, laying her work aside and moving around the front of her desk to take both of Halldóra’s hands in hers. The tender gesture nearly started the lass crying again. “Something to do with your beau?”

“He’s _not_ my beau,” Dóra denied, confirming Sága’s assumption that the guardsman Dóra had taken a shine to was, in fact, her beau. “We went on a few outings, that’s all and his family _hates_ me besides and I just made the worst sort of fool of myself in front of them and everything is _awful_ and I’m never leaving the scriptorium again.”

Keeping hold of Halldóra’s hands, Sága looked down on her contemplatively before remarking, “That was a very poor retelling. It does your skill no credit, no names given, no strong sequence of events, not a single quote and although your tale had a conclusion, I quite lost the introduction and body of the piece. Why don’t we try that again, hmm?”

It was easier, sometimes, for Halldóra to play the scholar, to exercise her mind and shield her heart. Less painful, certainly and that was why she could not hate her mother as Haldr did. She was sure her mother never ran to her masters, weeping over an insult and a lad. She had better things to do.

Halldóra did not. She took a deep breath and began her tale again, “The day was clear and warm, unseasonably so given how close we are to Durin’s Day. I made prior arrangements to visit the paddocks with Fundin, son of Farin, guardsman in the court of Thrór, son of Dáin, King Under the Mountain in the fifty-first year of his reign…”

The retelling took a quarter of an hour, but Sága listened patiently all the while and when she concluded, “Therefore, I believe the best course of action would be to remove myself to the Iron Hills and never speak to Fundin again, in this life or the next,” Halldóra’s eyes were dry and her voice stopped shaking.

Sága patted her hand in sympathy. “I can see the appeal of that,” she nodded, then favored Halldóra with a smile, “but I must say, I think you’re being a mite unfair to your young fellow.”

“He _isn’t_ my - unfair how?”

“Well,” Sága continued, thoughtfully. “In the first place, he seemed just as offended as you were - moreso, even. He did strike his brother.”

“I never meant to cause strife,” Dóra moaned, covering her face with her hands. Sága gently prised her fingers away before she left herself with bruises. It was a sorry situation, to be sure, but the girl had a tendency to overreact somewhat when faced with a problem whose solution could not be found in the reference collection. “I just wanted to...I didn’t even want to _be_ there! With horses and...I don’t know what I was thinking! I’m sure he never wants to see me again, oh, I’ve ruined _everything.”_

“I’m sure you were thinking that you enjoyed that Fundin boy’s company and you wished to share more of it,” Sága replied. “And there’s not a thing wrong with that, the only soul who was anything to be ashamed off is your lad’s brother.”

Straightening up, she reached out and tilted Halldóra’s chin up so that the girl was forced to look her in the eye. She did so, with an expression that was almost panicked and Sága felt a small twinge of guilt. Halldóra always loathed being corrected, but how was she to learn if her mistakes without correction?

As ever, Sága tried to be kind where Dóra was concerned. Though the girl’s mind was as sharp and multifaceted as the most cunningly carved diamond, she really knew very little of the world in so many ways.

When Dómarra mentioned that she and Hallthór were taking their youngest child out of school to tutor her privately, Sága thought very little of it. It wasn’t any of her business, being that Halldóra was not her child and she actually felt a twinge of jealousy. How exciting for a child with such an aptitude for learning to be given the undivided attention of the best minds in all the Seven Kingdoms!

At first, she thought the girl must be thriving in such an environment, she read her translations, heard her speak half a dozen languages with perfect inflection while other dwarflings of her age still struggled with the glottal stops of Khuzdul. It was amusing for the scribes to speak to her, that tiny little thing who knew so much, to listen to her rattle off the bloodiest epics in that child’s voice. Such a whimsical sight to see such a tiny creature hard at work, perched on three volumes of an encyclopaedia that she might see over the table.

It was only when Sága herself was called in to assist Halldóra with her calligraphy that she began to see that the girl was wilting. It was a few short years after Hallthór’s death, but it wasn’t grief that darkened un-childlike circles around her eyes or gave her such a nervous, downcast air when she was among her masters. When she was corrected for even the smallest mistake she went rigid as a board, and whispered, _“I’m sorry,”_ in such a melancholy tone that it seemed all the world’s wrongs could have been made right had she not erred in reproducing the word order of a First Age manuscript of the Ash Mountains, given orally.

One day Halldóra, after receiving her corrections for her penmanship when rendering Sindarin, raised her little hands obediently before Sága with an air of apprehensive expectation. When her tutor made no motion toward her, Dóra lifted her head and smiled hopefully. _“Do you save the strapping until the end? I like that, even if it is more strokes at once, otherwise it hurts to write.”_

It was such a long time ago that Sága had been able to take both of Halldóra’s little hands in one of hers and she covered them up, chafing them a little in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. _“None of that,”_ she said quietly and the look of wonder on the dwarfling’s face just about did her in. _“I’m sure you’re a very good listener, aren’t you?”_

An eager nod. _“Very good.”_

_“Just listen to me, then, closely and carefully. That’ll do very nicely in the long-term.”_

“I’m going to give you a piece of advice,” she said, taking up Halldóra’s hands again, as tenderly as she’d done when she was a frightened child, with too many books and too few friends. “ It does very little good to sit around deciding you know what someone’s thinking when they’ve not told you outright. That’s all very well for scholarship, when the subjects are long dead and can’t ask them until you track them down in the Halls of Waiting, but you’re theorizing in lack of evidence, always quite risky. In this case, an unnecessary risk as you can find your beau and ask him yourself whether he’d rather you traipsed off to the Iron HIlls.”

Swallowing nervously, Dóra looked away, once again that timid little girl uncomfortable discussing anything other than her lessons. “And suppose he proves the conclusion of my thesis is more or less sound?” she asked.

Sága tweaked her nose and smiled, “Then he doesn’t deserve another moment of your time. And he certainly isn’t worth running off to Grór’s court over. Whatever what I do without you?”

A heartbeat later Halldóra got out of the chair and threw her arms around her mentor in an impulsive embrace. “You’d suffer far fewer invasions of your office over minor crises,” she pointed out, voice muffled in Sága’s coat.

The older dwarf chuckled. “I relish these little interruptions,” she informed her. “Help break up the day. Now go on, you’ve an appointment to keep.”

* * *

Halldóra was not at the library by the time Fundin arrived, if she’d been there at all. It did not follow that she would instinctively flee to the library or the scriptorium when she was not needed at court, she had her own rooms and Fundin was certainly not going to dare approach her at home. The gesture was far too forward and, despite his earlier protestations, he really did not know her very well at all.

A round-faced dwarrowdam with a full golden beard, clasped here and there with delicate chains set with light blue stones, approached him after he spent fifteen minutes wandering around searching fruitlessly for Halldóra.

“Do you need some assistance?” she asked kindly.

“No,” Fundin replied automatically. “Er. I mean - is Miss Halldóra here?”

The dwarrowdam shook her head, “Not at the moment, what is it you need? If it’s not too specialized, I can help you.”

Specialized. Fundin supposed that getting down on bended knee and begging forgiveness for his kinsman’s appalling treatment of her was a specialized task, he certainly could not engage in it with anyone other than Halldóra, but this woman could probably take the library book off his hands.

“I just wanted to return this,” he said, thrusting it at her with more force than was strictly called for. “It’s late.”

The librarian opened the inside cover of the book and shut it again after a glance. “This is from the circulating collection that’s on a different - ah, well, little mind, it’ll give the apprentices something to do. You said you were late bringing it back? How many days has it been, do you remember?”

“Eight or nine months,” Fundin replied sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Give or take.”

To her credit, the librarian did not gasp aloud. She looked down at the book and back up at Fundin with an almost pitying expression on her face. “I’ll need to speak to Haldr about that,” she said slowly. “Wait here.”

Haldr. Why did that name sound familiar? Fundin wracked his brain, trying to remember where he’d heard it before, he could swear it had been recently when an impatient cough made him divert his attention to a dwarf who appeared before him, suddenly, as if summoned by magic.

He was losing his hair, that unfortunate fact was the first thing Fundin noticed, staring down at the top of a shiny bald pate which gave way to a high forehead and bushy dark eyebrows, shadowing brown eyes. A pair of spectacles perched on the edge of a curving nose and Fundin realized with a shock that this was Halldóra’s elder brother, Erebor’s head librarian.

She’d spoken of him in fond terms, but admitted he was a touch eccentric and very protective of the books in the collection. Although Fundin was at least a foot taller than him and much broader, he felt uneasy; the look on the librarian’s face was nothing short of menacing.

“So,” he said coolly, in a voice that was surprisingly deep for such a slight fellow. “You were brought here by a guilty conscience?”

Fundin felt as though he’d been plunged in ice water. It seemed Halldóra _had_ retreated back to the library after all, to apprise her brother of her maltreatment by the ruling family.

“I am truly sorry,” he said, swallowing hard. “If I’d any idea my brother was going to act like that, I’d have...I don’t know, _gagged_ him, there’s no excuse, but on my honor, sir, I didn’t know. If you could tell Halldóra - beg pardon, _Miss_ Halldóra - ”

“What does my sister have to do with returning your book late?” Haldr asked, his tone perplexed at first, then darkening into suspicion. _“What_ did you say your name was?”

Fundin was a brave dwarf. Stout-hearted. He’d faced down wargs and orcs in combat with nary a shudder or a flinch, not standing down until the last of their bloody carcasses stopped twitching in its death throes. Here, in the sanctuary of this pillar of learning, surrounded by the cozy warmth of a hundred thousand books facing a near-sighted library of less than four and a half feet, he felt the urge to turn on his heel and retreat.

“Fundin Farinul,” he replied formally. Was it too late to bow in greeting? Probably shouldn’t risk bending his neck to a possibly hostile opponent.

Haldr’s eyes narrowed and he took a step back, his mouth thinning to a disapproving line in his beard. “Ah,” he said grimly. “Of course you are.” With a jerk of his head, Haldr indicated that Fundin should follow him, which the younger dwarf did, meekly.

Fundin was taken to a large office, better organized than Halldóra’s was, there was furniture here and a floor, all visible. The walls were inlaid with shelves which held duplicate volumes and those most in need of repair or preservation. There was also a blank stretch of wall that was covered with squares of parchment, tacked up and inked with the images of dozens of faces. Fundin spied one that looked a great deal like his brother and squinted to read what was written underneath when the door slammed shut behind him and he found himself alone with the librarian.

_Just this side of deranged._

Everything Gróin spoke that day was anathema to him and wrong besides, Fundin hadn’t given a tinker’s damn what he said about Halldóra’s brother or her mother. Given how much he misunderstood her character, Fundin was sure Gróin was wrong about her kin, but here, being glared at by those dark eyes that were so like and completely unlike his sister’s, he began to think that the rumors concerning Haldr might not have been as wild as he supposed.

Haldr retreated behind his desk, taking up a letter opener and neatly slicing open an envelope containing a thick ream of parchment. He gave no indication that Fundin should sit or otherwise make himself comfortable, so he did neither, on the contrary, he drew himself up to attention, as if he was preparing for a review in full armor. His left hand twitched as if to set itself upon the hilt of his sword, but his fingers met only the leather of his belt; he hadn’t thought it necessary to arm himself to the teeth to spend an afternoon with Halldóra.

“A guardsman,” Haldr muttered to himself, taking up a quill, ink, and fresh sheet of parchment. He did not look at Fundin, it seemed that he was responding to the letter he’d received given the way his eyes were fixed on the missive while his pen scratched itself all over the blank page. “I thought she was having me on, but here you are. What was that about your _brother?”_

The librarian might have been talking about a slug, trampled under his boot, for all the open disgust in his voice. Fundin couldn’t help it, he dropped his military posture for an instant and squirmed. “He was...he made...he - he…”

Of all the times to get tongue-tied, this had to be the worst. Haldr looked up from his correspondence and rolled his eyes, barking, “He _what?”_

It wasn’t that Fundin shirked from confrontation, not when he could settle a matter with his fists or some other weapon, he was proficient in many different forms of combat, but verbal sparring never came easily to him. It was a blow to the face that bespoke all of his anger and disappointment with his brother, but he could not employ the same tactics with Haldr, so he stammered out, “He was rude. Inexusably so, I meant to come and apologize to her - ”

“What did you do?”

Fundin blinked. “What?”

Repeating himself, slowly, as if Fundin was both stupid and deaf, Haldr half-rose to lean across his desk, “What. Did. You. Do? If your brother was the one who behaved in an inexcusable manner toward my sister, it’s on him to come forward and make amends. Why would he send a messenger?”

“He didn’t,” Fundin replied, trying and failing to keep his shoulders square. “I came of my own accord, I felt badly - ”

“Not as badly, I wager, as she felt,” Haldr replied and Fundin’s heart sank like a stone when he remembered her stricken expression, her tears. “My sister is possessed of a sensitive soul. She knows very little of the world, she’s quick to be wounded and she feels the hurts more keenly than most.”

The librarian made a noise that might have been a derisive snort or a melancholy sigh. Or perhaps he was merely clearing dust from his sinuses. In any case, he went on in a low mutter, “Even once you’ve tried to make amends she’ll look on you with those big sad eyes for a week after. What exactly do you intend to accomplish with this hollow apology?”

Once again, Fundin found himself at a loss for words. It seemed impossible that sweet, kindly Halldóra shared the same parents as this curt creature, who’d gone back to his letters while he was speaking and looked at Fundin with an expression that seemed to say, _Do be quick about this, I’ve better things to do than talk to you._

“I just...I…I…want...wanted...”

The impatient expression deepened and Haldr’s voice took on a condescending tone and he prompted, “You just wanted to...what?”

Fundin’s shoulders slumped and he addressed himself to the floor, “I just wanted to ask if she was alright.”

“Then I suggest,” Haldr said, dipping his quill nib in the ink bottle again, tapping the excess off, “that you find her and ask her. Or, if she doesn’t want to be found, do not persist in seeking her out. You can go.”

“Oh.” Fundin stood, frozen to the spot at the abrupt dismissal. Slowly, he turned on the spot and walked to the door. He had only just seized the handle when Haldr called for his attention again.

“About that book,” he said, drumming his fingers atop the cover. “For items returned late, but in the same condition in which they were borrowed, the fine caps at two guilders. So it will be for you, if you’re as unlike your brother in book-borrowing as you are in manners. Pay at the desk.”

Used to following orders as he was, Fundin headed directly for the central desk of the library, already reaching into his coin purse to extract the correct amount. He was so set upon his task that he nearly collided with a red-haired lad who was walking the same path he trod, but in the opposite direction, calling, “Miss!”

Fundin was no Miss and so he assumed the other dwarf had not been trying to get his attention. Stopping short, Fundin was about to beg his pardon, but the redbeard backed up a few paces and squinted up at him, asking, “Did you see that brown-haired librarian with the fine nose just now? Goes by Halldóra?”

“I haven’t,” Fundin replied, his stomach making an odd leap under his ribs. It took him a second to realize the feeling was jealousy and he simultaneously tried to tamp it down, (of _course_ Halldóra would have made the acquaintances of other lads aside from himself) and at the same time drew himself up to his full height and puffed his chest out a little, (Broadbeams had a reputation among all the Clans for speaking the Common Tongue with the most charming lilt). “Truth be told, I was looking for her myself.”

The Broadbeam regarded Fundin as suspiciously as Fundin was looking at him. “What’s your area of research?” he asked, rising up on his toes to better look him in the eye. “Which Age do you study?”

“Er...none?” Fundin replied, confused. “I’m a guardsman.”

The Broadbeam could not have looked more relieved. “Oh! Well. That’s a horse of a different color. If you find her, tell her Boldi, son of Hafdi was looking for her. She knows why.”

“Sure, not a problem,” Fundin nodded and kept his expression impassive, but internally he was dying to know why this dwarrow lad wanted to see Halldóra in particular, what was this secret knowledge they shared and if they got married would he be settling in Erebor so Fundin could still see her regularly or would she be going to the Blue Mountains and taking his heart with her?

Boldi nodded, satisfied and went on his way, muttering something about books being returned to shelves far too slowly and you’d think a library as grand as Erebor’s was rumored to be would have a more efficient staff.

A loud sigh, unmistakably of relief sounded behind Fundin and he dropped his intimidating stance as he jumped in surprise at the unexpected sound. His mouth dropped open in dumbfounded shock when he realized the very girl he’d come to the library to find was standing directly behind him.

“That’s him gone, then,” Halldóra remarked brightly, favoring Fundin with that sunny smile of hers. “Just when I was wondering what _else_ could go wrong today, there he was.”

“Were you behind me that whole time?” Fundin asked, smiling himself now that his heartrate returned to normal.

Halldóra nodded, looking very pleased with herself. “I saw you coming round the corner, I was going to hail you, but you walk so fast and I didn’t want to shout. Then I saw _him_ coming and I dashed over - thank you, by the bye, you make an excellent wall.”

Fundin felt as though he had never received a higher compliment in all his days. That, coupled with the way Halldóra pronounced the word _him_ , as if engaging with Boldi was something of a trial, made him grin so broadly his jaw ached.

“Any time,” he offered, perhaps a little too loudly since he was shushed by several surrounding scholars. “Any time,” he repeated in a whisper. “So long as it’s not me you want to avoid, then you’re out of luck.”

“Oh, I’d never want to avoid _you,”_ Halldóra said, then blushed. “That is to say…”

“I wouldn’t blame you, after today, I am _sorry,”_ Fundin interrupted, gushing against his better judgment. “I know it doesn’t mean much, coming from me, but...well, I didn’t mean for you to run off crying after your second time near a horse. Now I’m worried you’ve been put off them for good.”

To his immense relief, Halldóra laughed, earning louder shushes and more glares. “No, no, it’s...well, thank you. Sincerely, but it wasn’t your fault. Only may we forego riding lessons next time?”

“Next time?” Fundin asked eagerly.

Halldóra’s face fell slightly and she replied, “If there’s to _be_ a next time, I mean…I don’t want to be forward, if you’d rather I just took myself off to - ”

“No, no! I mean, yes, yes!” Fundin corrected himself, but the correction only seemed to confuse Halldóra further. “What I _mean_ is that I’d be...very happy to see you again and I _promise_ no other member of my family will happen upon us. How about...mornings? When the lads are at lessons and the elder guardsmen get the first crack at the practice field, I can forego a few hours in the forge.”

“I can forego a few hours copying script,” Halldóra nodded eagerly. “Tomorrow? Or is that too soon?”

“Tomorrow is perfect,” Fundin said, unable at the moment to remember what he was tasked to do in the morning, but thinking it could not be as important as spending a few uninterrupted hours with Halldóra. “Meet you at the gate? After breakfast?”

“After breakfast,” she nodded. “I might just bring it with me, I’m determined to be on time!”

“No matter if you’re a few minutes behind,” he replied fondly. “So long as you come.”

“This is all _very touching,_ I’m sure,” a grey-headed Stonefoot, the tip of his nose shiny with smeared ink, complained. “But could you take your lovemaking outside where we don’t have to hear it?”

“We surely shall,” Halldóra remarked primly. “Tomorrow. After breakfast.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, next time they will have a nice, normal, uninterrupted date. And someone (haven't determined who yet) will straighten Gróin out.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul Word I Just Made Up: Azyunginh, literally the female form of the word "lover," in my fake dwarrow myth of Roan and His Beloved of Stone, the lady's name is unknown, she's just called 'the Beloved,' which I've decided translates into the name 'Azyunginh,' which Dóra uses because she's fancy.

Halldóra was as good as her word, she turned up at the gate of the mountain, just as the last tables were being cleared in the dining halls. She even managed to remember her cloak this time.

Granted, her hair was mostly unbraided, her cloak was thrown over her arm, the laces of her boots were slapping against the floor, and there was a piece of toast jammed in her mouth, but she was still there had not made herself a liar.

Fundin looked altogether more well turned out, but he didn’t mind that most of her hair was falling in a riot of curls over her shoulders, made her look rather comely. Besides, her cheeks turned the loveliest shade of pink once she started running. “Good morrow,” he greeted her cheerfully.

“G’mmrrw,” she mumbled around her toast. With her right arm she held out her cloak, lined in rabbit fur, if he wasn’t mistaken. “D’yemind?”

Fundin did not mind and took it over one of his arms as she bent to tie her boots, finishing her toast as she did so. “Busy morning?”

“Aye,” she spoke between bites. “There’s a paper I was thinking about presenting at the conferences in the springtime, but it’s not anything close to presentable yet, I have a thesis and a conclusion, but nothing to support either of them - well that isn’t so, I have _evidence_ , it’s just a matter of organizing it coherently and citing my source documents and then once _that’s_ over with, I need to pare it all down into something that can be explained in under a half an hour - I’m sorry, I’m dull. This is dull, how was your morning?”

Slightly overwhelmed, Fundin vainly sought out something he could say to make his reply that wouldn’t be dull, but he gave up and merely shrugged as he said, “I ate breakfast.”

Actually, he’d done one unusual thing prior to eating - he asked Loni to make excuses for him in the forge that had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he and Halldóra were trying their damnedest to have a proper outing. The past weeks made him well aware that there wasn’t a soul amongst his kin that he could trust not to go yammering about his personal life to a body that had one good ear to listen. He didn’t entirely trust Loni either, but at this point he thought that the fewer the number of dwarves who knew about himself and Halldóra the better.

Not that there was anything in particular to know, he thought as they made their way out of the gates. But his business was his business - regardless of what Gróin thought, he was not a child who needed looking after, but a grown dwarf who could be trusted to leave the mountain without an escort.

“So…” Halldóra spoke into the silence that ensued following Fundin’s comment about breakfast, fastening her cloak. “You spoke to my brother the other day, I hear.”

“Er...I did,” Fundin replied warily. There was precious little Haldr could have told his sister about their encounter that painted him in a favorable light. Quite the contrary, really. “A bit. I didn’t say much, I think he might’ve thought I was a bit slow.”

Halldóra laughed nervously, thus confirming that was _exactly_ what her brother thought of him. “Better slow than delinquent,” she smiled slyly up at him. “But in any case, don’t worry about those two guilders, they’ve been stricken from the record.”

“Have they?” he asked, rather touched. The money was nothing, a trifle, but the fact that she’d gone out of her way do him a favor pleased him greatly. “Did a little mouse get at the ledger?”

“Aye, looks like, had a wee nibble,” she winked, tucking a few fly-away strands of hair behind her ears. “There are some perks to being the head librarian’s younger sister - not many, but _some_. Your record is clean, you may now have any volume that suits your fancy, so long as it’s there to be leant out.”

Fundin’s smile drooped a little. “Er...I’ll keep that in mind,” he remarked, rubbing the back of his neck in a habitual fidget. “Thanks.”

They proceeded along a few more steps, no particular destination in mind when Halldóra piped up again. “What was that last book that kept your interest so long? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I don’t mind,” Fundin began awkwardly, slowing his pace a little so she didn’t have to walk so quickly to keep up. “Er...only it didn’t. Keep my interest. I didn’t...finish it. Exactly. Or nearly. Barely started it. Actually.”

“Oh,” Halldóra said and stopped walking. Dark eyes flickered upward and she twirled a strand of hair, loose and curling, around one finger. An expression passed over her face, a hint of doubt and she opened her mouth to say, “Do you know, I’m not sure that this - ”

But Fundin spoke at the same time as she, “I thought we might - no, no, you first.”

“Oh no!” Halldóra exclaimed, hands dropping out of her hair immediately. “After you. I insist. What were you going to say?”

Swallowing, Fundin inclined his head toward the eastern slope of the Mountain. “There’s a little copse of trees, look awfully pretty just now, some still have a few apples left in ‘em. Thought you might like that, your breakfast being so scanty.”

There were a few crumbs caught in the pleats of her tunic and Halldóra brushed them away self-consciously, but she smiled at Fundin and nodded. “An apple sounds just the thing,” she said, the doubt gone, replaced with relief. “Lay on.”

It was a beautiful day, as beauty went above ground. Azure sky with a sun so bright they were both squinting and shielding their eyes when there was no shade to be found. The day wasn’t so cold, until the wind kicked up and played merry havoc with Halldóra’s unbound hair. A bright orange leaf swirled down from one of the trees and got caught in her curls, but Fundin tugged it gently free and let it go skittering along the path in front of them.

“Do you know,” Halldóra piped up again conversationally, “I’ve gone out more in two weeks with you than I have in the last month? I’d nearly forgotten what the sun looks like.”

“What do you do when you aren’t working?” Fundin asked, genuinely curious. Then again, perhaps there wasn’t anything to say on the matter, for it seemed that she was always working and at so many different occupations. When she wasn’t in the library, she was in the scriptorium or else at court or in the council chambers or tutoring scowling princelings in foreign languages. It made him feel almost slothful by comparison, Fundin could be counted on to be training, in the forge, at court or in the dining hall, depending on the hour of the day. With Halldóra, it was almost impossible to predict where she might turn up next.

The fact was not lost on her for a moment. “Not much,” she admitted. “I’ll see the plays when they’re put on, the operas, but mostly I stay home reading, if I’m not at work.”

Nudging her in the arm playfully, Fundin remarked, “Now, I asked you what you do when you’re _not_ working and you’ve given me no proper response.”

Trying to hide the beginnings of a smile, Halldóra nudged him right back, “I have! Theatricals and reading!”

“Theatricals are good for a night out, I’ll grant,” Fundin acknowledged. “But reading sounds like work to me.”

Clucking her tongue and shaking her head, she inquired, “I know you’ve told me you aren’t a great reader, but what is it you don’t like to read, exactly?”

It sounded like a trick question, but from the little Fundin could honestly say he knew about her, that Halldóra wasn’t the type to speak in riddles. “...books?” he ventured after a bit of consideration.

Halldóra laughed, not a mocking laugh, it was a laugh that made it seem as though she thought he was teasing her. “But what _sorts_ of books? There’s all kinds and new ones being published all the time. I vow I can find you one you’ll like if you’ll set me the task. You can’t hate them all!”

“I don’t _hate_ them,” Fundin replied hastily, lest she think he was some kind of uneducated troll. “I’m just not interested in them. In books, I mean, stories are a different thing altogether. Listening’s the best way for me to learn a tale, there’s less danger I’ll fall asleep.”

Making a considering face he nudged her again - why he kept knocking against her shoulder he could not say except that he liked touching her - Fundin added brightly, “What’s the last thing _you’ve_ read? Go on, tell me, I swear I’ll enjoy the telling a thousand times more than I would the reading.”

“You ought to ask your nephew, he’ll give you a very interesting telling - unique in the body of literature surrounding the tale’s import,” Halldóra replied. _“The Song of Beren and Lúthien._ That’s the _last_ thing I read, I’ve been through it before, more than once. Do you know it?”

“I know Beren, the Butcher of Tumunzahar,” Fundin said, staring into middle distance, trying to conjure up some memory to match the name ‘Lúthien.’ “Wasn’t she an elvenmaid? His bride? They stole gems from Morgoth and he lost a hand...then they both...died? He of his wounds, she of grief?”

“That’s it!” Halldóra nodded approvingly. “That’s it exactly - well, not exactly, there were some bits in the middle you overlooked, but that’s it in essence - oh. _Oh._ Isn’t that beautiful?”

The little cluster of trees certainly was very lovely to look upon. The overhanging branches bedecked with their dying leaves created a lovely, jewel-toned canopy from which sunlight trickled through, dappling the grass and dirt with patches of light.

“Beautiful,” Fundin nodded, but he was not looking at the trees and their festive leaves. His eyes were fixed upon the dwarrowdam at his side, face upturned toward the light, mouth slightly ajar, her dark eyes wide with wonder. The leaves crackled under their boots as they stepped forward and Halldóra kicked a small clump of them, sending up a small flock of them, giggling like a child as she did.

“Once,” Fundin remarked, “when I was little, Thrór and my sister wanted to take me riding, but I was in a contrary mood. It was just about this time of year and I hid myself away in a pile of leaves. They couldn’t find me for a half an hour, I thought I was the cleverest thing.”

Halldóra laughed, but was quick to add, “Oh, your poor sister must’ve been beside herself! I only hid from my mother once and it wasn’t even proper hiding. We were in the library together and I wandered off into the stacks and settled myself in with a book. I didn’t even know she was looking for me, she didn’t want to shout!”

“Oh, Dísa shouted alright,” Fundin recalled, rolling his eyes. “I’m still shocked half the mountain didn’t come out to see what all the fuss was about.”

The day was growing warmer and Fundin shucked off his own cloak, hanging it on a low branch. The apples were not so plentiful now as they had been even a few weeks earlier, but he spotted a few stubborn ones clinging to the higher branches. Halldóra unclasped her own cloak and lay it upon the ground, squinting up at the apples.

“Bit higher than I thought,” she remarked idly. “Still, I’m up for a challenge - give me a leg up?”

Fundin grinned down at her and could not resist saying, “You want to play Lúthien in her tree, then?”

Halldóra laughed, then scoffed, “Oh, no, I couldn’t play at Lúthien, I’m much too short. I was thinking I could be Azyunginh, Roan’s Beloved, setting a task, going on a quest. Granted, this’ll be a short quest, Azyunginh went to the sea to fetch pearls for her lover, I only mean to get an apple for my...particular friend.”

Particular friend. Not very romantic, but Fundin thought he liked the sound of that. Grinning in what was surely a very foolish way, he crouched and laced his fingers together obligingly so that Halldóra could use his hands as a step. In a trice she was in the tree, carefully climbing her way to the higher branches where the apples hung.

“Has he done something wrong?” Fundin asked Halldóra’s backside just as she plucked an apple from a branch and sent it hurtling down to him. It was green, kissed here and there with spots of red and she tossed another right after. Fundin caught them deftly, but nearly dropped them when Halldóra momentarily lost her balance and nearly fell on him. She steadied herself and cast a sheepish grin over her shoulder, but he thought instantly that he wouldn’t have minded if she had come toppling down on him.

“Has who done something wrong?” she asked as she made her descent.

“Thráin,” Fundin clarified. “Giving you cheek at lessons? Neglecting his work? Only I can’t see why you’d force that tale upon him unless it was for punishment.”

Another apple came out of the tree, that one aimed (not very accurately) at Fundin’s head. He caught it too and grinned cheekily up at Halldóra who very briefly stuck her tongue out at him, until she seemed to realize that was rather a childish thing to do while halfway up a tree and blushed again.

“You’re being very ungenerous,” she chided Fundin mildly. “It’s a famous tale, known the world over! Anyway, Thráin’s a very able student, he has skill enough in his translations, it’s just that he wants a bit of confidence when it comes to speaking. I’m sure he’d never have come to me if he wasn’t a prince.”

Fundin nodded silently. Ever he had been unenvious of his nephew’s position. He’d take the Guard any day, leave the politicking to the brainiest among them, but now he was especially thankful that Thráin enjoyed such elevated circumstances of birth, for he mightn’t have been introduced to Halldóra otherwise.

“How’d he find it? The story?” he asked as she settled herself on a low-hanging branch, just about level with his shoulder. Fundin handed her one of the apples and she withdrew a penknife from her pocket, shining the flesh of the fruit on the leg of her trousers.

“He wasn’t fond of it,” Halldóra admitted, but there was a twinkle in her eye when she spoke. Fundin sat down at the base of the three and found himself looking up at her while she spoke for a change. The side of her soft leather boot slid past his arm as she swung her dangling legs slightly. The breeze was gone for the moment and despite the shade cast by the trees, he found himself growing warm and so shrugged out of his cloak as Halldóra went on. “He found Beren a bit of a scoundrel, I’m afraid. Too forward - ”

“Forward?”

Unable to hold back a snort of laughter, Halldóra clarified, “I think his exact words were, ‘What sort was he, trying to touch her in the bushes? He ought to have introduced himself, he’s lucky she didn’t strike him!’”

Fundin laughed heartily at the fairly accurate impression of his younger nephew’s irritated voice and customary scowl. Halldóra giggled as well and continued, “So, he thought Beren had too much cheek and too much daring. Since Thingol set him such an impossible task to win his lady’s hand, Thráin thought it would be altogether more sensible to set his heart on another.”

“Sensible,” Fundin agreed, “but it wouldn’t make much of a story.”

“Not much, no,” she nodded, chewing her apple slice thoughtfully. “And lest you think I’m some...dross-brained Elf-admirer, I favor our tales of love above all else. If we’re strictly speaking preference and choosing favorites, not ranking them according to wit in rendering or reputation among the free peoples, I say you can’t beat Dwarves for romance.”

“Roan and his Beloved, you mean?” Fundin asked, polishing off the first apple and starting in on the second. “Speaking of, you’ve accomplished your own quest as well, thanks for the spare.”

“You’re very welcome,” Halldóra smiled, nudging her toe against his shoulder in what Fundin was sure was an affectionate manner. “And of course, Roan and his Beloved are the grandest and best known lovers our line boasts, but I prefer a tale that’s a wee bit humbler.”

“Let me guess,” Fundin offered, cocking his head and gazing at Halldóra quizzically, as if he could read her thoughts in her eyes. She cocked her head and met his eyes, looking on him so sweetly he lost his train of thought. “Ah...let’s see...Nefr and Oddr?”

The silent shake of Halldóra’s head told him at once he’d guessed wrong, but it was a very worthy try. They were two shieldbrothers who defended one another through trial after trial during the War of Wrath. Both were able warriors, but Nefr was considered the best of their race and in those darkest days it was easy to make enemies. When challenged to single combat against a huge orc, merciless and cruel, with powerful dark magicks strengthening his arms and sharpening his weapons, he agreed though it almost certainly meant his doom.

To preserve his lover’s life and for the sake of their army, Oddr donned Nefr’s armor and stole out when the other was sleeping to challenge the orc himself. Oddr was slain after a magnificent fight and Nefr vowed bloody revenge. His eventual triumph and his desecration of the slain orc’s corpse, dragging it around the field of combat behind wild horses until it was torn apart, was the gruesome highlight of many dramatic renderings of their story.

“Wait,” Fundin insisted when Halldóra opened her mouth and seemed about to tell him. “One more try...erm...Assa and Elsébe?”

Another tragedy of two dwarrowdams, Assa the widow, a dwarf of Durin’s line in exile from Khazad-dum with two young children, her husband slain by the beast itself and Elsébe, a Stiffbeard shieldmaiden whose people offered shelter to the refugees. The two found love and comfort in one another, Assa found a new home until the war drums sounded and Elsébe answered the call.

“Oh, that one’s _terribly_ sad,” she remarked wistfully. “But wrong. Shall I tell you?”

“You must,” Fundin shook his head regretfully, “for I’m out of guesses. ”

“Well, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer,” Halldóra reassured him, reaching down and patting one of his broad shoulders consolingly. “They’re excellent tales all, but my particular favorite is the story of King Josurr and Queen Íma. Less grand, as I said, but no less beautiful, I don’t think.”

The moment Halldóra revealed her answer, Fundin wondered how it was he hadn’t guessed that from the beginning, especially since it was more history than it was legend, something he could see recommending it to her, even if the tale was not so sweet as it was. The story was constructed based on letters between a Blacklock King and his wife who ran their stronghold in the Orocarni mountains in her husbands’ absence. War and misfortune kept him from hearth and home for twenty-five years, but they wrote often and those letters that survived the ravages of the road and time were full of devotion and chronicled the troubles that beset them both at home and abroad.

Unlike many of the popular romances, this one had a happy ending: the two were reunited and reigned happily and prosperously to the end of their days. The story had been reconstructed on stage and retold in verse and song throughout dwarven lands. The warm climes that formed the setting for Íma’s scenes sparked the creativity of many a dwarrow stage-maker - though the last time a production had been performed in Erebor the players accidentally flooded the main auditorium trying to recreate the sea.

“No less beautiful,” Fundin agreed and Halldóra shrugged, slightly self-consciously.

“I prefer a cheerful ending to a sad one,” she admitted. “Though Elsébe’s twenty-minute death aria, when she sees visions of Assa’s face, you know, in the version composed by Haelfús Haelgerul? It’s incredible when it’s done well. Makes me cry buckets and buckets of tears, anyway.”

“Aye, incredible,” Fundin echoed, then favored Halldóra with a sly smile. “How’s it start off again?”

But she was nothing if not clever and saw the the little ruse immediately. This time it was her turn to engage in some half-hearted shoving and she swatted Fundin’s arm with her left hand, hurling the apple core away with her right.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she pouted, but her eyes were merry. “For I’m apt to start in on it and I’ll sour you on the song forever. When it’s _ably_ sung, it’s incredible, when it’s botched it’s more tragic than the story itself. Anyway, I’m an Assa myself, I haven’t the lungs to play at Elsébe.”

“Assa sings many a pretty song herself,” Fundin pointed out. “But I won’t needle you if you’d rather not, I couldn’t carry a tune if I had a basket to put it in.”

For a second, Halldóra pressed her lips close together and seemed as if she wouldn’t say another word - though Fundin was acquainted enough with her to know that the temporary silence would not last long. Which was something of a relief, he did like the sound of her voice very much, raised in song or not.

“I’ll sing,” she said slowly, _“if_ you promise not to laugh at me.”

“You can’t be any worse than me,” Fundin assured her, unable to keep his expression as serious as Halldóra hoped he would, but it was a very good effort. “But you have my solemn vow that if you do terribly, I won’t say anything. We’ll pretend it never happened.”

“You’re a very difficult sort to say no to,” Halldóra informed him, half her mouth turning up despite herself. Fundin was about to counter and tell her that was the _first_ time anyone had ever told him such a thing, but Halldóra straightened up on her branch, squared her shoulders and started to sing.

_“Where are you going?_   
_Where are you going?_   
_Can you take me with you?_   
_For my hand is cold and needs warmth._   
_Where are you going?”_

It was a song from the end of the second act of the opera, when Elsébe declared her intentions to Assa to try to make her fortune as a sellsword, the implication being that her feelings for the young widow had grown too strong to survive proximity to her much longer. Rather than send her away with a regretful heart, Assa openly declared her love for Elsébe and vowed to remain with her, always.

Halldóra spoke true when she said her voice was better suited to Assa than Elsébe. The tone of it was high, almost thin and sweet as a tinkling bell or larksong. Just when Fundin thought she could not possibly seem better Made than she was, she surprised him.

_“Then I’ll take your hand._   
_Finally glad, that you are here._   
_By my side._   
_By my side.”_

A stunned silence followed the performance and Halldóra turned as red as the leaves stirred up by the wind. She blew out a breath through her cheeks and turned away from Fundin, mumbling, “We’ll just never mention that again, as you said.”

“What?” he exclaimed, standing up and coming around the other side of the branch to look at her, startling her so much she almost fell out of the tree; Fundin put his hand at her waist to steady her. “No! I mean, if you’d like, but...I was surprised. You talked yourself down so much, I wasn’t expecting you to have such a lovely singing voice. And it is. Lovely. You led me on there, thinking you weren’t much to hear. That was as beautiful a song as I’ve ever heard.”

The red deepened and once again Halldóra had trouble looking Fundin in the face. “You say the dearest things,” she told him. “I - I don’t know what to do with you. Or what to say. I _always_ know what to say and I never know what to say to you. I know that doesn’t stop me talking, but there you are.”

All of a sudden, Fundin was very aware of his hand on Halldóra’s waist, resting against her hip, how her face was once again so very close to his and he gulped. The motion of his throat was invisible behind his beard, thank the Maker for small mercies, but he gulped nevertheless.

“You said Thráin thought Beren was forward,” he recalled nervously, but he did not move his hand from her side and Halldóra gave no indication that she wanted him to do so. “To - ah - seek attentions from his lady without, erm, introductions.”

“We’ve been introduced,” Halldóra replied, equally nervous, her voice gone very soft. The flecks of gold in her brown eyes seemed to shine and her lips were...well, they were _right there._

“Aye, so we have,” Fundin licked his lips and took a breath. Loni’s voice intruded on his thoughts, unhelpful and unwelcome, _Fundin the Fearless...scared to talk to a wee lass who stands no higher than his elbow?_ “But there’s something to be said for being sure your, er, af-affection is...ah…”

“Desired,” Halldóra supplied, then looked mortified with herself. “That was a poor word choice! Any other would do. Welcomed, for instance. Or acceptable. Or…”

“I’d like to kiss you,” Fundin blurted out. “Would that be...acceptable?”

The look on Halldóra’s face reminded him very much of the expression he sometimes saw on deer when he was hunting, the startled, frozen look that came just before an arrow struck home. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

“Acceptable,” she breathed when she found her voice again, then inclined her head closer to his. “Very much so.”

There was all sweetness in the tentative press of their lips, a legacy to the apples they had consumed, but a deeper pleasure drove them closer. One of Halldóra’s slim hands rested, at first, against Fundin’s cheek, then her arms went lower, around his neck. The hand that lay so cautiously against Halldóra’s waist encircled her and Fundin’s other arm employed itself in pulling her from the tree and into his embrace.

The wind picked up again, pressing against their backs, making their hair flutter, but as wrapped up as they were in each other, neither Fundin nor Halldóra felt it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY. But isn't it nice when they have time just to be alone together? Apologies for excessive gushing over dwarf theatre, but I LOVE THE IDEA OF DWARF THEATRE YOU GUYS. And the song Dóra sings is "By My Side," from _Godspell_. Yes, _Godspell_ , I thought a song about following Jesus translated well for expressing devotion between two tragic heroines.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

She ate alone, Gróin noticed, watching Miss Halldóra take her place at the end of one of the long tables in the common dining area that was usually claimed by the scribes and librarians. As usual she took a slim volume out of her pocket - probably a novel - and propped it up against a jug of ale. She was methodical as she started in on her beef stew, pulling the middle out of her bread and tearing it into pieces to thicken the broth while leaving the rest of the crust on the side.

All the while her eyes never stopped zipping rapidly over the page, she didn’t even stop her reading to eat, turning the pages with her free hand so quickly that Gróin was sure she couldn’t possibly be taking in every word.

Solitary. He decided with displeasure. The lass was solitary and what kind of match would she make Fundin? The apprentice scribes of her own age were sitting _next_ to her, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that she was not seated _with_ them. When greeted by one of the older masters, Halldóra would raise her eyes and smile, presumably wish them good evening, then go right back to her reading.

Over the past few weeks, he had taken to keeping an eye on her during the evening meals; he had little other occupation since most of his family wasn’t speaking to him. Well, not words he wanted to hear.

 _“Apologize,”_ Dísa ordered him several days ago when he _happened_ to be walking by the archery ranges when the Guard was training and it _happened_ to be a time when his siblings were at work. His sister stopped, but Fundin walked by as if he hadn’t seen him. _“Say you were wrong, go groveling for forgiveness from the lassie and when you’ve done that, apologize to Fundin for being an arse.”_

Gróin glared at her. _“And why should I? I’ve never known you to apologize to anyone about anything.”_

With a condescending pat on the head and a sly grin, Dísa pointed out, _“I’ve never made a wee little scribeling cry before, have I?”_

Gróin had no reply to make. Later that night when he was snapping at everyone and everything, his wife favored him with one of her famous sighs and he thundered, _“What? What have I done_ now?”

Maeva gave him a frank look and said, _“You know exactly what I’m going to say, so I won’t waste breath in saying it. I love you, but I’m not so blinded by your good qualities that I can’t see the bad. Good night, dear.”_

And so, alienated from the affections of his family, Gróin chewed his meat angrily and took to staring at Miss Halldóra when they chanced to be in the dining hall at the same time - until Maeva noticed what he was doing and swatted his hand with the back of her knife.

“It’s peculiar, isn’t it?” he hissed into Maeva’s ear. “How the girl doesn’t seem to have a friend in the world?”

His wife took her knife to her stew to cut an overlarge bite of turnip in half. “Could be she’s shy.”

“Shy,” Gróin repeated dully. “You don’t ascend to court scribe in half a day by being bashful.”

“Hmm. Well, in any case, she’s got one friend,” Maeva smiled and nodded across the room. “There. You see?”

Fundin had arrived, the top of his tunic hanging from his belt with the arms tied loosely around his waist, obviously fresh from the training grounds; he was far less dirty than if he’d been laboring in the forges. Miss Halldóra did not look up at his approach, but he didn’t seem put off. Instead he walked behind her and gave her a sharp jab in the back of the head.

The girl jumped, then her face brightened with a positively luminous smile. Fundin smiled back and gestured toward the book. She shrugged and shook her head, then closed the volume, looking around evidently trying to find a place for him to sit. Fundin made a dismissive gesture, then tilted his head toward a table that was slowly filling up as his fellows in arms started trickling into the hall.

It looked like the girl was going to demur the offer to sit with the guard and Fundin, being Fundin and a polite, undemanding boy, appeared to have every intention of taking her at her word, until Loni jogged over, determined to persuade her to join them.

Gróin never much liked Loni, but eighty years of trying to convince Fundin to find friends who were even marginally less irritating were all for naught. Loni crouch down next to Halldóra and stuck his hand out for shaking, then gave her a bit of a tug to urge her off the bench. Apparently he pulled harder than he meant to for the skinny little thing went flying and landed in his arms. Fundin looked horrified, but then Loni said something that all three took to be amusing and a scant second later they walked off to the guards’ table, to the evident approval of all of Fundin’s friends.

“Oh, would you look at that - pardon me, you _are_ looking,” Maeva whispered sedately. “There are about a dozen new friends for her, isn’t that lovely?”

Gróin was forced to put his whole attention on his supper. Not because he accepted that staring at his younger brother and the scribe lass without speaking to them broke all the laws of common decency, but because they were lost amid the table of burly warriors.

* * *

He was missing nothing of importance; merely the valiant attempts of his brother’s friends to harangue and badger his new young lady friend in an effort to make Fundin’s complexion go from lightly browned to bright red to deepest purple. Currently, after Loni bodily hauled Halldóra off the bench, his cheeks were the pale ruddy shade of a newly ripe apple.

“So, Dóra - may I call you Dóra? - so, _Dóra,”_ Loni drawled around a hunk of bread stuffed into his mouth. “Fundin’s been keeping you away from all of us which I think is mightily unfair of him.”

The flush deepened from ‘apple’ to ‘tomato’ as Fundin muttered, “Naught of the sort. She works a lot.”

“As a scribe?” a young guardswoman named Tírra inquired. She had a friendly, open face and a cheerful grin that was all the more luminescent for her three gold teeth. _“Court_ scribe and all, very fine.”

Before Dóra had the chance to open her mouth, Loni butted in, “Not just a scribe, but a librarian! For Fundin was forever going down to the library and losing her amongst the books, weren’t you?”

“I thought she was a scholar - a tutor,” Galinn interrupted, confused. In contrast to his sweaty, half-dressed companions,he looked rather better put together. An injury to his leg that had not quite finished healing meant he was an observer in the Guard’s training, rather than a participant. “For the prince?”

“All at once, actually,” Dóra interjected with an apologetic half-smile. “It’s as Fundin says, I work...quite a lot.”

Tírra whistled through her teeth, “So you’ve got...three crafts?”

“Oh, well, no, I mean, that is to say,” Dóra shook her head and raised her hands, fending off accusations of being more than she was. “I’ve only attained my _mastery_ in one, in script. Librarian...ing is something I’ve just picked up from spending so much time in the stacks - born to it, as it were, my brother was already apprenticed when I came along, so that’s that and as for being a ‘scholar,’ well, I _read_ and I write a bit about what I’ve read, but I’m not published or anything like that, so it hardly counts. I don’t think. As for tutoring, it’s only in Elvish, we only ever touch on two dialects and that’s nothing at all! If you already speak it, you speak it, the rest is just translation and recitation and pronunciation which is really very simple if you’ve...er. Got a knack.”

The young guards were staring at her, then their eyes slowly slid to Fundin (a shade of cherry rapidly turning to plum). Loni spoke up for all of them and made an attempt to sound casual. “So. You’re a genius, then?”

Dóra’s cheeks were instantly a match for her particular friend’s. “Oh, no!” she protested. Then paused and amended, “Well...a bit of one.”

“Aye, a wee bitty genius,” Loni grinned, clapping Dóra on the back. “Excellent! Not exactly overflowing with brains at this table - I’ll own there are a few clever souls about. Tírra’s a mason, she knows her figures even if her language could use some brushing up!”

“Eh, when it comes to words I chisel out what’s given to me,” she shrugged carelessly. “That way, if a mistake’s made, there’s laying the blame on me. Give me good honest stone any day, I’d build a fortress from the bedrock up on my own before you’d see me anywhere _near_ a smithy.”

Fundin got some of his usual color back as he and Loni vigorously defended smithwork as being uncomplicated compared to chiseling forms and figures from virgin stone. Galinn quietly engaged Halldóra in conversation about theatre until their talk was curtailed by a scribe who came round the table asking if he might borrow Halldóra on a matter requiring her input.

Loni shook his head as he watched her go and kicked Fundin’s leg under the table. “You weren’t joking about her being in-demand,” he remarked. “It’s a wonder she’s got time for you at all.”

“Means she likes you especially,” Tírra replied sagely. “Lass with a mind like that could well be wedded to her work and she carves out a space of time for you every day. Only I can’t quite work out _why.”_

Vitr, the scribe who took Dóra away from the guards’ table did not steer her back to the place where her fellow scribes were sitting. Instead he gestured for her to walk into the corridor just outside the dining hall where Gílla was standing, tapping her foot, along with Jódís, one of Vitr’s peers in the scriptorium and little Elísif who was bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, excited to be part of grown-up conversation.

“What is it?” Dóra asked, wondering what matter could be so pressing that they dragged her away from supper to answer it.

Gílla rolled her eyes, “Gossipmongering. I put a stop to it and told these three that if they were so curious about who you pass the idle hours with, they ought to ask you directly.”

“What?” Dóra looked around at them all in utter bewilderment.

Vitr and Jódís had the pride to look chagrined, but Elísif beamed broadly at Halldóra and said, “They want to know how you snagged yourself a hero like Fundin Farinul and where they can get one.”

Jódís looked mortified. “Elís!” she scolded the younger girl. “That is _not_ what I said!”

“Nor I!” Vitr declared. “All I wanted to know was...well, how you came to be acquainted. It’s a curious thing, you understand - ”

“It is _not_ ,” Gílla insisted firmly. “Where does anybody meet anybody? Out and about. Little wonder they ran into each other, he a guard and she coming and going from court.”

“Not just _any_ guard, honestly Gílla you make him sound like an ordinary sellsword,” Jódís rolled her eyes. “That’s _Fundin Farinul - ”_

“Aye, Jódís, we all heard Elís,” Vitr rolled his eyes, evidently having heard enough about the merits of Fundin Farinul to last him a lifetime.

Jódís pulled his nose and went on, ignoring his indignant cry of pain, “He’s a _legend!_ His sister’s the Dragonslayer, Queen Under the Mountain, Defender of the Realm, Huntress of Erebor and he’s nearly racked up as many titles! Fundin the Fearsome, the Scourge of the Orcs, he’ll kill hundreds of the creatures in the course of a single battle! And he’s not hard to look at either.”

Dóra’s blush returned again and this time it was she who couldn’t quite meet anyone’s eyes. “He’s very kind,” she said softly. “And awfully sweet, quite funny too, when you get him talking - ”

“What?” Jódís asked, brow wrinkling. “No he’s not! I mean, I’ve never spoken to him, but I’m sure I’ve never seen him smile - ”

“That’s because you’ve only seen him on guard duty or marching off to war,” Vitr shot back. “None of them are smiling then. What I can’t work out is _how_ you get him talking. What do you two have in common? I remember him at school, he was about as bright as lead.”

This time Halldóra reached out and gave Vitr a smack. “He’s not! He isn’t a great reader, but that doesn’t make him stupid!”

Vitr rubbed his arm and raised a skeptical eyebrow at her. “You’ll pardon me for saying so, but that’s not exactly a convincing argument.”

Gílla let out an irritated snort, “Oh, come, come. You’ve spent enough time around scholars to know that some of the best read are complete idiots. To the point - Dóra, you like him?”

Unprepared for the sudden inquisition, Dóra did not have it in her to come up with a clever retort that would tell her colleagues in no uncertain terms to mind their own business. Instead she nodded mutely.

“There we are,” Gílla nodded with satisfaction. “And it’s no secret that he’s fallen arse over head for her, not with how much time he spends milling around the library not reading anything. So, there you have it. Two souls who like each other, no great mystery there.”

“But doesn’t he think you’re...dull?” Jódís burst out, unable to contain her most burning question. “Not that I think you are! But for someone like _him_ who has seen so much of the world, who has so many accomplishments, whose craft is the craft of Father Durin, I would assume our work seems small to him.”

Dóra did not have time to reply for Jódís went wide-eyed and pale when she saw someone coming through the doorway behind them.

“‘Evening,” Fundin nodded to Halldóra’s companions a little uneasily. “I was just wondering if you were - ”

“Done!” Dóra announced taking his arm and clinging to it like a lifeline. “Done! Where are you off to?”

“Er...a walk, I thought,” Fundin replied shortly. “Want to come along?”

“Aye,” Dóra nodded vigorously and would have dragged him away if Fundin was the kind of dwarf who could be dragged anywhere. Fortunately he started moving away from the little cluster of scribes and librarians and Dóra was able to bid them adieu. “See you in the scriptorium! Or the library! Wherever I am and you are and we next meet, that is where I will see you!”

Vitr looked after them a beat longer before he finally shook his head. “I don’t understand it,” he said.

“Neither do I,” Jódís agreed.

“I want to be the cupbearer at their wedding,” Elísif announced. The naysayers goggled at her, stunned, but Gílla favored the dwarfling with a fond, knowing smile.

The pair making their way down the corridor did not look back or slow their pace until they joined the usual crush of dwarves making their way down Erebor’s arteries of interior streets and roadways making their way to the dining halls.

“Where are we going?” Dóra asked, scurrying along beside Fundin whose long legs swallowed the road beneath his boots.

“No idea,” Fundin said. “I just wanted a bit of peace - were you really busy?”

“No, not at all, peace sounds like just the thing - were your friends _that_ disappointed by me?” she asked, worry written all over her features.

“No, no, not at all,” Fundin reassured her, slowing his steps to better match Halldóra’s. “They thought you were brilliant, they think I don’t deserve you.”

“Ha!” Dóra let out a brief hoot of laughter. “Isn’t that something? Only mine said the same thing about you - that you must think I’m dull.”

Fundin stopped short and stared down at Dóra in disbelief. _“Dull?”_ he repeated. “You’re the most interesting dwarf I’ve ever met! Everyone was saying I couldn’t keep up - talking, thinking, all that and you’re bound to get tired of me.”

“Get tired of _you?”_ Dóra asked, equally flabbergasted. “Never! You’ve been all over and you’ve done so much and...well, you’re the most interesting dwarf _I’ve_ ever met! More than interesting, bad word choice, you’re fascinating.”

“Fascinating, am I?” Fundin queried, sensing a competition on the horizon. “Well you’re _amazingl.”_

Not one to be outdone, Dóra squeezed Fundin’s arm and tilted her chin up at him with a broad grin, “You’re wonderful!”

“You’re perfect!”

He had her there, but Halldóra was not one to be outdone where a battle of vocabulary was being fought, “You’re...you’re...Father Durin reborn!”

They stared at one another, eyes locked, unblinking until a voice behind them beckoned them to move, _please,_ they were blocking the path.

Fundin and Dóra obliged the passing traveler and moved aside, then looked at one another and burst out laughing. Dóra buried her face in Fundin’s sternum and he put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“Father Durin?” Fundin managed between chortles. “You’re ridiculous.”

Dóra looked up and wiped tears of mirth out of her eyes, punching Fundin softly on the arm. “Perfect, of all the - you’re impossible.”

“Let’s just call a halt before we begin insulting each other,” Fundin recommended and Dóra nodded her agreement. “I’ve got an empty home with a door that locks, what do you say?”

“Haldr has a no talking after supper rule, so our rooms are out,” Dóra replied. “That sounds wonderful - just like you!”

Ducking out from under Fundin’s arm she ran off, darting off into the bustling crowd, leaving Fundin to make the journey more slowly with many mutters of, “Pardon me - excuse me - sorry! - excuse me…”

* * *

Gróin sat before the fire in his family’s rooms, smoking late into the night. Maeva had gone to bed already, but he was too nettled to sleep. It had been almost a solid month since he had last spoken to his brother and the silence weighed heavy upon his heart and mind. Was his wife (and sister and brother-in-law) right? Should he swallow his pride and apologize. He had to admit that his disapproval seemed to have backfired. Rather than pushing the two away, Fundin and the young scribe seemed to have only grown closer.

The door to his son’s sleeping quarters opened slowly. Óin was dressed in his night things, but wore his dressing gown and slippers as he came down to the sitting room. Gróin assumed the boy was rather too old to seek out his parents after being frightened in the night and so had no idea what his son might want as Óin came to sit beside his father on the sofa. Once settled he let out an exasperated sigh that sounded uncannily like one of his amad’s.

“Thráin told me to stay well out of it,” he said and Gróin knew immediately what ‘it’ was because Óin was _his_ son, after all, and he hadn’t raised a fool.

“Good advice,” he growled around the bit of his pipe. “You ought to heed it and hie thee to bed.”

“He _told_ me to stay out of it,” Óin went on as though he hadn’t heard him. Evidently Gróin raised a clever son, but not one inclined toward obedience. “But I don’t think so. He said you were all acting like that snake that eats its own tail and no good would come from interfering, but this has been going on for ages and enough’s enough.”

“You think so, do you?” Gróin asked, miffed. “That’s all very well for you, but this is an adult matter and - ”

“Aye, but Da, I’ve actually _talked_ to her,” his son informed him. “And not just to shout at her.”

“Have you?” Gróin asked suspiciously. “When?”

“Ages ago,” Óin replied, gesturing carelessly. “Well, at least a few weeks ago. Thráin and I...that’s not important, but we spent the evening with him and she was _really_ nice. She’s little and strange, but I like her. Ama likes her, Auntie Dísa likes her, Uncle Thrór likes her and he’s King Under the Mountain. Thráin likes her and he doesn’t like anybody. Uncle Fundin likes her - and isn’t that most important? Since he’s the one who’s spending the most time with her.”

It was a fair point, Gróin noted uneasily and chose to ignore it.

“It’s a trifle more complicated than that,” he said, tapping the bowl of his pipe. “If you have children, you’ll understand.

“Oh?” Óin asked, not altogether sincerely. “Did _your_ adad shout at Ama before you started courting?”

Gróin was silent such a long time that Óin had to nudge him in the side before he responded, “No. But in the first place he was dead long before your mother and I started courting and in the second, he would have had no objections to her. He was acquainted with Ama and her family and found much to favor about them.”

“Alright,” Óin continued. “So why don’t you get to know Dóra and her family?”

“I know her family,” Gróin replied darkly. “And what I know I don’t much like.”

That quieted Óin for a minute, but after considering the matter he soon spoke up again, “Alright. Well, I still like her. And in any case you ought to say you’re sorry because Uncle Fundin never comes round anymore and you’re all out of sorts on his account and Ama thinks you should.”

Yawning, Óin got up and shuffled back toward the staircase. “I’m going to bed,” he announced. Halfway up the stairs he paused and looked back down at his father. “Think about what I said, though. This is getting ridiculous.”

Twenty minutes later, when Gróin found himself standing in front of his family’s former residence, he told himself firmly that he had been planning on speaking to Fundin that night anyway and Óin’s conversation had only been well-timed, not chastening.

Fundin was taking his time in getting to the door, Gróin noted after he knocked. He was tapping the sole of his boot impatiently when a high-pitched voice behind the stone asking, _“Who can it be at this hour? I hope nothing’s wrong,”_ made him debates the merits of fleeing.

When Fundin did open the door he was fully clad, save for his bare feet, and his elder brother allowed himself a relieved exhale. “Good evening,” Gróin said, attempting civility.

“What are you doing here?” Fundin blurted out, mouth going slack in shock. He didn’t sound particularly angry, just confused which Gróin took to be a positive sign.

“I’ve come to give a long overdue apology,” Gróin replied a bit stiffly. “I’m...pleased to find you both here.”

Dóra padded over to the door and stood just behind Fundin who blocked her from Gróin’s view quite effectively - though from the brief glimpse he got of her, he was reassured that she too was fully clothed.

“Erm…” Fundin looked between his elder brother and Halldóra, torn. Luckily, the young dwarrowdam made his decision for him. She stepped out from behind him and stood in the doorway, twisting her hands in front of her nervously.

“Excellent,” Gróin said shortly. “Ah...well. I sincerely apologize. For my behavior, lass. And for taking so long in saying so. It was unworthy to attack you as I did, you’ve done nothing to prompt it. I overstepped certain boundaries and it was wrong of me to do so.”

It was a stilted, awkward apology clearly made by one unused to the act. Gróin stood almost at attention and had trouble looking directly at either of them. Fundin was leaning on the doorway, a doubtful expression on his face while Halldóra worried her hands, her eyes wide as she looked up at Gróin.

Fundin shifted his weight uncomfortably when Gróin seemed to have finish. The worst of his anger at his brother had burned away and he was forced to admit that his moratorium on contact was also wearing a little thin. He missed Gróin, his brusque, no-nonsense manner, aye, even his righteous indignation about any number of daily vexations. But it did not matter what he thought; the offense was not his to forgive.

“Apology accepted,” Dóra replied with a tentative smile. “I - well, I know elder brothers are rumored to be a bit...nervous about...things. Mine isn’t, but some...are. I’ve heard.”

Gróin did not think he would ever like the girl - he was of his son’s opinion that she seemed a little peculiar - but Fundin was smiling at her as though she laid the earth with gemstones and he supposed that had to be enough for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends again! Or at least speaking again! Go, Durins, go!


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warning:** For **dysfunctional parent/child relationship** , mentions of **corporeal punishment in an academic setting** , **parental disappointment** , and **guilt over parental disappointment.**
> 
> Also some of the thought content is a little PG-13, but that's kind of overshadowed by the end. And the song Loni sings is "Siúil a Rún," traditional Irish song, I got the translation off Wikipedia.

“Hey, now!” Loni exclaimed when next he and Fundin were working in the forge. “You don’t mean to _marry_ the lass, do you?”

Fundin colored faintly, he hoped the heat would explain the reddish flush to his cheeks. “I don’t...well, I don’t see why you’d say _that.”_

Loni only stared at him, dumbfounded and Fundin could not fathom why he’d opened his big mouth to ask his most unhelpful of friends a question. All he wanted to know was whether or not he thought that Dóra would prefer a hairclasp of bronze or silver. Bronze, he thought, or brass if she didn’t mind the smell. Silver would look just as fine, though he’d never seen her wear silver before. If he had to hazard a guess, he would assume it was because she never had time leftover to polish it or send it out for cleaning. The only reason he even asked Loni was because he had a sister and might know what the lassies were wearing in their hair. It was a perfectly innocent question, nothing that ought to have prompted talk of marriage or a stunned expression such as the one Loni wore.

“Look,” he said after a second. “It’s not that I don’t like your pretty little scribe - she’s delightful! Only you don’t want to come on too forcefully, do you?”

“It’s just a gift!” Fundin replied defensively. “Not a proposal!”

“Flowers for flirting,” Loni recited, right out of an etiquette book. “Wood for a bit more. Metal for _courting,_ and gems for engagement!”

“That’s old-fashioned,” Fundin mumbled, but he could not deny that, as little education as he received in the art of romance from his kin, even he knew the usual trajectory of presents one bestowed upon a sweetheart. Flowers when the affection was new. Fleeting, quickly dying flowers that were faded before the night was out, often went tucked behind the ear of a dancing partner during the summertime festivals. No promises there, just a lovely accent to a moment’s pleasure. Then carved wood or fur and skins for the soul who caught your eye, made you think, _‘Ah, could be.’_

When your heart was well and truly set, something of metal, strong, beautiful, permanent to indicate lasting affection. And if marriage was your aim, mark the proposal with gemstones, rings for the not so well-off and a veritable shower of rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds for the wealthy.

But - and this was quite a significant _but_ \- but a gift might be given out of thoughtfulness. For practicality’s sake. A display of affection without the promise. And Dóra’s hair was forever falling out of its arrangement so it stood to reason that she could use a new set of hair clasps.

“I don’t mean to ask her for anything,” Fundin said when Loni only gave him a skeptical look under his wiry red eyebrows.

“You’d best not,” he said, hefting his hammer. “For I’m not going to hide you when your sister - or your _brother_ comes rampaging through the city because you’ve decided to court without consulting them.”

Fundin pulled a face at that, but Loni started working and his clanging drowned out all further discussion of the matter. Good thing too because Loni was getting ahead of himself and half a year ago Fundin hadn’t even known Dóra existed. The fact that he couldn’t imagine his life without her now was utterly beside the point.

He thought of her when he had no reason to think of her. Here in the forge, for instance, he stared down at the scene laid into the floor of Father Durin coming to the banks of Kheled-zâram and wondered who created the mosaic and when. Then thought, _That’s something Dóra would know. I ought to ask her next time I see her._ She always gave a little more information than he initially sought, but Fundin didn’t mind that. It was a testament to how great her knowledge was. Besides, she had an endearing way of ducking her head and laughing when she thought she’d gone on too long.

Alright, so he thought about her. Fundin shook his head to clear his mind. It was only natural that when he had a question he should think to ask her for the answer; she knew everything and if she didn’t know, she could find out. What was perhaps less easy to explain away was thinking of her at idle times when he had no questions at all. A fine piece of mahogany cabinetry would make him think of her hair. A glimmer of goldwork, her eyes. Then he’d catch himself smiling for no reason, or someone else would and they’d ask why he looked so dreamy-eyed all of a sudden.

That was embarrassing. Not as embarrassing as the _dreams_ mind, but embarrassing.

To be fair, they weren’t dreams exactly, more wonderings in that time between awake and asleep or asleep and awake. They’d come on rather strong since that night Gróin had come to apologize. That night he took a blanket from his own bed and cuddled up next to the fire with her. It still carried the faintest whiff of her vanilla-scented hair oil and he’d remember then, how snugly she’d fitted up against him, her slim form in his lap, in his arms, her head tucked under his chin - the scarlet hue on his cheeks and neck was now _far_ too deep to be mistaken for forge flush and Fundin cast his mind around for something neutral to think of.

Bread. Plain old cracked wheat bread.

But that didn’t really help, all it did was make him think of all those nights he’d seen Dóra sitting by herself until Loni cajoled her into joining them at the Guard’s usual table. He didn’t know why she seemed to have few bosom companions among her peers and he hadn’t ask, he didn’t want to seem to pry. Dóra, he thought, should have all the friends in the world.

Loni whistled sharply above the sound of the bellows and the din of metal-on-metal. _Burn,_ he signed, gesturing at Fundin’s trouser-front.

Fundin was about to throw a red-hot pair of tongs at him since that was _not funny_ until he realized that his trousers were too loose and the fabric had been eaten through by the steel he was holding. Swearing quietly, he tried to focus on his task.

 _Silver,_ he decided. _Silver would suit her perfectly well. Not as well as gold, but I don’t want her to think I’m forward._

Beside him, Loni’s whistling continued, along with a tune that Fundin recognized.

 _Walk, walk, walk my love_  
Walk quietly and peacefully  
Walk to the door and flee with me  
And may you go safely, my dear.

Before Fundin could shut him up he started singing, voice lost in the noise, but Fundin knew the song and knew the words and also knew that he’d cause more trouble shutting Loni up than Loni would being foolish and so he tried his mightiest to steer his thoughts away from the song. As was the theme for the day, his mind refused to cooperate.

 _His hair is black, his eye is blue_  
His arm is stout, his word is true  
I wish my darling, I was with you  
And may you go safely, my dear.

* * *

“Post,” Haldr announced, striking his sister on the back of the head with a handful of rolled parchment.

Good thing too, for she’d been rather useless the last seven minutes together. There were some treatises on metallurgy she was meant to be fetching from the archives, but she’d been stalled in her task was was staring single-mindedly into one of the torches that lit the way in the cold depths of the mountain.

Try as she might, Halldóra was unable to get the thought of the night she’d passed cozily ensconced in front of Fundin’s fireplace out of her mind. In a turn of events that she had not breathed a word of to _anyone_ she found the only way she could get her thoughts to turn off so that she could sleep at night was to wrap herself up in her blankets as if they were a cocoon and pretend that she was in his arms.

It was only that there was so very _much_ of him and all of him was wonderful, every inch. From his thick black hair to his rough hands that could, in fact, just about encircle her waist, to his deep voice like thunder to his surprisingly patient temper. She supposed she expected a warrior to have more brimstone and bluster about him, but Fundin was remarkably sweet-natured. Maybe he burned all his fury away on the battlefield.

It had certainly been hot under that blanket, he was like her own personal furnace. Fundin had replaced his tunic when he sat down to supper, obscuring her view of his chest and arms, with muscles like boulders beneath a smattering of tattoos and a mat of curly black hair. Probably for the best, she thought, heat rising in her face as she gazed into the flame. She’d tasted his mouth, felt his hands upon her through her clothes, but they hadn’t...and perhaps he didn’t want to...or was _she_ meant to…?

This was one of the few places where books and songs and theatre were no use whatsoever. All the great plays, the great ballads, the great epics made it seem as if romances were conflations. Great bursts of fire and song and poetry that ended with the lovers coupled together between the verses. As much as Fundin said he liked her singing, Halldóra was perfectly convinced that if she started belting some purple prose at him while getting out of her clothes, he’d call a Healer in to have her sedated.

He had been the one to ask about the kissing. Maybe it was her turn now. Perhaps if she approached it like a contract, _I, the undersigned, Halldóra Halthórul, do hereby request the presence of the undersigned Fundin Farinul in my bed at precisely eight of the clock, tomorrow evening. Court dress is not required._

That was the moment Haldr found her and struck her around the head, startling her back to reality. Mercifully so, otherwise she might’ve stayed down there all day, lost in reminiscing.

Recalling her task, Dóra dropped the cart off at the desk to be held for whichever dwarf had requested the books and proceeded to her brother’s office. Haldr seemed to be in tolerably good spirits as he handed her a letter with her name written on the front in Dómarra’s precise hand.

“Just came from the aviary,” he said, his voice cheerful. “Thought to give it to you straight away.”

“That’s odd,” Dóra murmured, slicing the wax seal open. “She doesn’t ever write me unless I’ve written her first. And I haven’t had the time to respond...to her last…”

All the color drained out of his sister's face. Her hands, so steady as she practiced her calligraphy, shook slightly. And when she raised her eyes to look at Haldr her expression was one of utter devastation and betrayal.

"You...you _told_ her?" Dóra choked, mouth puckering as she tried her hardest not to cry. "You told her about Fundin. Why...why would you do that?"

Few things could unsettle Haldr. Fewer still could cause him to feel guilt. The look on his sister's face left him utterly undone. "I..." he began, but what seemed to be very good reasons a few weeks ago suddenly did not excuse his action in the slightest. "I..."

_I wanted her to know that she'd failed in her effort to make a heartless little automaton._

_I wanted her to know that, despite her best attempts to the contrary, you turned out very well._

_I wanted her to know how happy you were, that she might finally realize what a miserable wench she is._

“I didn’t know it was a secret,” he said finally, managing to turn it around and make the entire thing sound like it was Dóra’s fault; a tactic he’d picked up from his mother. “You never told me I couldn’t say anything about it. If you _had_ \- ”

“It wasn’t yours to tell!” Dóra replied shrilly. “Oh, she...it’s not a secret _here_ , but she...she ruins everything. I can’t have anything of my own, she always has to...twist it. Or take it away.”

Even things that once gave her pleasure were not allowed to remain pleasures for long. When Dóra was tiny, lisping phrases in Elvish that she picked up listening to her parents have conversations they didn’t want her listening in on, she’d only repeated it because it was pretty. She wanted to learn calligraphy because she thought it looked so nice. She plucked the thickest tomes off her father’s bookcase because she thought they sounded interesting.

Elvish lessons turned into rote repetition until her throat was sore and her eyes stinging from squinting at the runes that formed the language, learning them by heart.

Calligraphy resulted in bruised knuckles as her mistakes were switched out of her fingers.

And if she did not _finish_ those books she picked up, if she could not recite passages back or recall the smallest minutia from the footnotes, her mother and, she dimly remembered, her father, would sigh and shake their heads and ask her why she began the task at all if she did not read _carefully_ \- Back to the introduction. Begin again. Do it perfectly. Do not rise from that chair until it is perfect. If you _really_ want your pudding, you’ll complete all your work beforehand. And if it isn’t done to the best of your capabilities, you shall be sent to bed without supper.

Cold meat. Hard bread. Long hours coaxing the last bits of light out of candle nubs because the light wouldn’t be so dim and she wouldn’t be straining her eyes if she’d been a little faster, if she hadn’t dawdled, if she would only _do her best._

Halldóra did not love learning and script and language because of her parents. She loved it all in spite of her parents. But it was one thing entirely for her mother to turn all of her pleasures into chores, Dómarra only did that to things Halldóra liked that she approved of. This that she did not like had a tendency to disappear.

The stuffed hare she had when she was a child was gone because of Dóra’s tendency to spend hours playing make-believe with him. The carved wooden rocking horse was locked away because, after her bout of tears on the back of the pony, it was clear that she would never be a horsewoman, so what need had she of it? The storybooks of her earliest memories were tucked away in a cupboard under lock and key after her father died. Wasn’t she too old to look at the pictures? Much better to study legends in their entirety, not abridged renderings that satisfied other children.

And Fundin? Dómarra made her disdain clear in every line of her letter. Like all of the things she considered beneath her daughter’s notice, she preferred that Fundin just disappear.

**I am writing to you in regard to a post-script in your brother’s last letter to me. You know as well as I that Haldr is possessed of an unfortunate brand of humor and it is likely he made you the butt of a joke that will amuse no one save himself. According to your brother, you have taken to courting - again, I must emphasize that I do not believe him in the slightest - a guardsman of some slight renown.**

**I likely need not remind you that such a thing would be disappointing to me in the extreme. While I believe your intellectual potential will remain unfulfilled the longer you tarry at Thrór’s court, I have no objection to your taking a husband - in theory. Though, of course, marriage and children are a drain on one’s time and resources, and a thankless one at that. However, if you are firm in that desire, I would prefer that you seek one of your own ilk. A fellow scholar, would be the most agreeable. Haldr has informed me that in addition to a high-ranking position in the King’s Guard, this guardsman is also a smith.**

**You can have nothing in common with one such as that. Perhaps he finds something comely about you, but beauty is fleeting and affections based on such a thing crumble like a mansion built upon a sandy foundation. And while you have ever been the romantic, I would hope that your capacity for reason is stronger than your capacity for fancy. Such a flirtation would go nowhere and because it would lead to impermanence any time spent attempting to further a fruitless match is time wasted. I am informing you of this only to save you time and heartache.**

**If you must court - and I do not think you must, for you are very young and accordingly, very foolish, a blight upon all youth, I am afraid - wait. Ten years, twenty years, until someone whose temperament, craft, and intellect more closely align with your own. I will not say the qualities of a potential partner must match your own; despite your insistence upon underperforming, your intellect is unmatched.**

**Write to me at your earliest convenience.**

**I remain your affectionate mother, etc.**

“She’s in the Iron Hills,” Haldr offered when the silence became too uncomfortable to bear. “She can’t - well, I’d say her odds against your beau in hand-to-hand combat are poor. Do you want me to write back and tell her I was just trying to worry her?”

“Have you _ever_ apologized for vexing her?” Dóra demanded, crying in earnest now. “Ever? That’ll convince her if nothing else does! I had one...one little thing that was mine. And now you’ve ruined it! How _could_ you?”

Haldr had not answer to give, none that would not make him sound like the most callous dwarf to have ever walked beneath the earth. Dóra left him alone with the letter abandoned on the desk. Haldr picked it up and crumpled it before throwing it into the fire. In that moment, he could not say whether he hated himself or his mother more.

Dóra fled the library. She’d pledged five hours, but had no intention of finishing them up. Her stomach was churning, she felt very hot, then prickly with cold and her heart was beating a mile a minute.

It was a baseless, nameless terror, of everything and nothing. Dóra knew in her heart and mind that her mother was not about to come bursting in and lock Fundin away or pull her by her wrist until she was in a carriage bound for the East. She knew this and yet she could not help feeling that something precious had been lost. Fundin was not a secret, but the happiness she found when she was with him was something entirely hers. And now her mother knew and disapproved. Despite the careful phrasing of her words, _a joke_ , but if her mother truly thought Haldr was joking, she would not have written.

Up and up and up and up she climbed, nearer the top of the mountain where the smithies could belch their flame out of the vents into the open air. Dóra curled up beside the huge carved doors, face buried in her knees. Fundin would have missed her entirely if she hadn’t been on his mind.

“Dóra?” he asked, standing over her uncertainly. She looked wretched and he could not fathom the cause, for if she was injured or otherwise unwell, why would she have come to him?

Halldóra was on her feet immediately and with a hastily voiced, “I’m sorry,” threw her arms around Fundin and hid her face in his sternum. Reflexively he held her close with one arm and stroked her hair with his free hand.

He doesn’t know what to say. ‘Are you alright?’ was right out since it was clear she was _not_ and he could not begin to guess what had her so upset. Fundin wasn’t quick-witted or clever, so he just held her, ignoring the queer looks of his fellow smiths, glaring at those who stared too long until they turned away.

“Come on,” he said after Dóra’s sobs died away to sniffles. “Come on.”

It would have been easier to carry her, Fundin mused as they stumbled together down the corridor, her with one arm around his waist, he still holding her shoulders tightly. But more of a spectacle. Instead he took her back to his suite, the only place he knew for sure that they would be alone.

He shut and locked the door, then bent and looked Dóra directly in her reddened eyes. “What happened?”

Dóra’s face crumpled and Fundin reached out to brush her tears away. “I just wanted to see you,” she managed to get out. “I should go, I’m sure you have - ”

“I don’t,” Fundin interrupted before she could say, ‘better things to do.’

“But you must be - ”

“I’m not,” he finished before she could say, ‘busy.’

“I don’t want to waste your - ”

“You never could,” he said gently, speaking over the whispered word, ‘time.’ Perhaps he knew her better than he thought he did. “Come here, sit down.”

A fire and been built in the hearth and the sitting room was cozy. Dóra sat stiffly upon the sofa, eyes on the flame and the tears fell again, silently this time. Fundin sat beside her and he did lift her this time, enough to pull her into his lap.

With her face half hidden in his chest, Dóra managed to say, “My mother doesn’t like you.”

Fundin was momentarily dumbstruck. “Your mother in the Iron Hills?” he asked. “Your mother whose never met me?”

“Aye,” she nodded. “The very same. Granted, she doesn’t like anyone. But...it’s a long story. Just tell me when you want me to stop.”

And so, after taking a deep breath, Dóra told him more about her childhood in twenty minutes than he’d gotten out of her in twenty days. Fundin thought it was odd, how she would attentively listen to his stories of growing up with his sister, his brother, and Thrór, but offer none of her own when he was finished. How she would laugh and coo over the things his nephews did when they were small, but never spoke of any living relation of her own save her brother. As it turned out, there was simply very little that was complimentary to say about her mother.

At no time did Fundin ask her to stop. He heard it all with a look of stony anger growing on his face, making him grind his teeth. About how her parents forbade her having lessons with children her own age. How, over time, play was traded for work. How she had many teachers and pupils she counted among her good acquaintances, but few friends because while other dwarflings had each other to make mischief with, to share secrets, to undergo trials, she only had an ever-shrinking circle of Masters who cared little about what a young girl might want for herself and only what they thought a small genius needed.

“But I’m not good enough,” Dóra concluded, wiping the last traces of tears off her face. She did not sound sad anymore, only tired. “No matter what I do. I’ve never been good enough for her. It’s why I stayed here, when she decided that there was nothing in this kingdom for her. Cowardly, probably. But if she’s far away, I don’t have to see how I disappoint her, day in and day out.”

“Cowardly?” Fundin looked down at her in disbelief. “No! Not a bit. She...your brother’s right to call her a hag. She sounds cruel.”

“She’s not!” Dóra said immediately, almost imploringly. “She...she’s done me some good, honestly. And she...it’s only that she expects so much from everyone. She’s no harder on me than she is on herself.”

“Then she’s too hard on herself and too blind to see it and I don’t _care._ If a letter from her is enough to put you in this state, I can’t have any soft feelings toward her,” Fundin declared angrily. “I swear if she tries to make you feel badly, I’ll…”

What? What could he do with Dómarra miles away? Make two weeks’ journey just to give her a solid punch on the jaw in hopes that she’d leave her daughter be? Fundin learned enough of her from that brief conversation to know that he did not care a fig about earning the lady’s good opinion. Let her think the worst of him, but Dóra...she deserved the good opinion of all, he felt that with all his heart.

“Well, I hope I don’t see her,” Fundin settled on finally. “And that’s all I’ll say on the matter.”

Dóra sat up and put her face in her hands. “I shouldn’t have told you,” she shook her head, wishing the words away. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t meant to make you feel ill-disposed toward my mother, it’s as much my fault as it is hers. If she has standards and I don’t meet them, the blame is just as much on my head - ”

Fundin covered her hands with his own and moved them gently away from her face. “Here now,” he said, his expression and voice soft, just for her. “None of that. I won’t have you speak so lowly of yourself. You’re...I’ll have you know, you’re one of the dearest things in the world to me. And I don’t like hearing those I love spoke badly of.”  
Dóra lifted her head so fast she almost struck Fundin in the chin. “You…” she started, then paused uncertainly. “You l-love me?”

Fundin felt as if he’d been plunged in ice-water. It took him a minute to find his voice, but he managed it when he realized the look upon Halldóra’s face was not panic; it was hope. “I do,” he said firmly.

She smiled and the sight of it was like glimpsing a diamond in a pile of coal.

“I love you too,” Dóra said softly, audaciously, as if it was a secret.

“Well, then,” Fundin said, favoring her with a bit of a diamond-bright smile himself. “Everything’s alright, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Dóra nodded. She tilted her head back and craned her neck, but she did not need to make too much effort; Fundin was already leaning down to kiss her.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

The harsh scrape of blade-on-blade rang out in the guard’s atrium, almost deserted save for the two combatants, locked in combat, swords flailing. The steel blades of their weapons shone in the moonlight. The younger warrior thought he had the advantage, but the elder used his bravado against him, knocking him off his feet during an ill-timed thrust.

“Something on your mind?” Dísa asked, raising her sword, ready to go again. Fundin stayed where he was, gazing at the sky thoughtfully. He was the one who’d asked for this training bout, claimed he wanted the challenge, but they’d gone three rounds and each time she’d given him a thorough trouncing. Dísa had little humility where her swordsmanship was concerned, but she was no so blind to her own skill that she failed to miss Fundin’s distracted air.

“Can I ask you something?” he inquired, not quite looking her full in the face.

“‘Course you can,” she replied easily.

“Would you put the sword away first?”

Dísa smirked and stood over him, placing the tip a hairsbreath away from her brother’s heart. “Now that you’ve asked me, of course I won’t. What is it?”

Fundin took a breath - not too deep, there was a sword leveled at his chest, after all - and met his sister’s eyes. “What do you think about...courting Halldóra?”

The sword never wavered, but Fundin saw his sister’s muscles relax. “I’m married,” Dísa said flatly.

Battering the blade away he sat up and rolled his eyes at her. “Not you!” he groaned, not finding the reply as funny as his smirking sister did. “Me! I meant me! If I was to court Halldóra, would you approve or not?”

“If I didn’t, I’d keep it to myself,” Dísa replied, extending a hand to pull Fundin to his feet. “It’s your life.”

Fundin took her hand, but hesitated to rise, “But do you approve?”

Dísa was evidently tired of waiting for him for she hauled him up without any aid from her younger brother whatsoever.

“Aye, I suppose,” she replied. “She’s a good lass and you like her, I don’t see that there’s aught to disapprove of. I’m not _Gróin_ , you know, all set to go head-shaking and nay-saying before I’ve got the lay of the land.”

Fundin nodded and smiled slightly hopefully. “Good. Good, that’s...good. Thank you.”

Unsure why he should be thanking her for being allowed to make decisions, Dísa only shrugged. She was about to ask whether or not Fundin wanted to go again (once she’d begun a bout of sparring, she could go for hours), but he sheathed his sword and kicked at the yellowing grass underfoot with the toe of his boot.

“Erm. Now that’s...settled, do you...know how I should go about it?” he asked, shy and chagrined.

Dísa froze. “Why’re you asking me?”

The chagrined look deepened into an abashed smile. “Because you’re not Gróin. As you just said.”

Too right she wasn’t Gróin. Gróin went off into apple orchards with his darling regularly, among other activities best performed in privacy. They talked sometimes about having other children, now that Óin had begun his apprenticeship. No, she was not Gróin.

Only then did Dísa sheath her own sword and let out a breath. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” she replied uncomfortably. “I haven’t any more idea what two bodies do when they want to court than you do. Presents, I think, have you made her a present?”

“Started one,” Fundin confirmed. By the Maker, that face would be the death of her. Full-grown, full-bearded, and a veteran yet he still had the bright sparkling eyes of a dwarfling who hadn’t learned it was their parents and not a friendly faery who traded lost teeth for gold.

“Well, then I suppose that’s it,” Dísa said with false confidence. “Meet with her some fine eve, give her a present, announce your intention to court, see what she makes of it. Thrór’d tell you to do it ‘neath starshine, but he doesn’t know what’s done any more than I do, so that might’ve been him talking out of his arse.”

Fundin snorted and replaced his tunic. “You didn’t, then? Court, I mean.”

“Of course not,” Dísa replied, pulling her coat over her shoulders and tightening her belt. “Don’t you remember? It’s not as though you were a babe at the time.”

In fact, Fundin had been in his thirties, only just apprenticing. A little younger than Thráin. His brow furrowed and he seemed to struggle in recalling the event.

“I remember one day you weren’t married and the next you were,” he said at last. “Not much of a to-do, was it? Thráin got a much better feast on his Name Day.”

In fact, the wedding of King Thrór of Erebor to his warrior Queen had been a rather humble affair. As humble as it could have been, quiet certainly. Luck was with them, the harvest had not gone well for the Men of the outlying lands and it seemed in poor taste for the nobility to feast and carry on while the commonfolk could only toast them quietly over modest suppers. Especially coming so soon as it did on the heels of the coronation.

 _Wait,_ the advisors said. _A year, two years even, there’s no hurry. Do something grand to mark the occasion._

Two years later they had a son and the city feasted then. Very little was made of the wedding, which was exactly what they both wanted. What she wanted, anyway. Thrór hadn’t much to say about the matter. The legal proceedings went smoothly, neither side made demands or arguments; who would argue with the wealth of the kingdom? Even Dísa’s personal wealth, the coat of the dragon she had slain was kept in the treasurehouse. The rest was all words on paper and it meant nothing to either of them.

 _You’re both very agreeable,_ the clerk said who drew up the contract, pages and pages and pages that they hastily signed, eyes skimming the words, not really reading them. _Anyone would suspect you’d gone Mannish and a child was on the way._

Dísa was fairly sure that she had actually shuddered and Thrór couldn’t meet her eyes for the rest of the night. Two years later, Thráin.

“I suppose he did,” she said, without affect as the left the sparring grounds. Then, trying not to sound quite so dour, added, “But don’t think Thrór’s going to let you off that easy. Ever since you laid eyes on her, he’s been planning exactly what courses he’ll be serving, the musicians he’ll be hiring, not to mention stockpiling mead and wine.”

Her words had the opposite of their intended effect; when he heard about her husband’s enthusiasm over his imaginary nuptials, Fundin looked rather panicked.

“I don’t mean to _marry_ her,” he said with the air of one who had been making the same protest regularly. “Everyone says...I’ve made her some hair clasps, that’s all!”

“Doesn’t that mean you’re engaged?” Dísa asked, genuinely clueless.

Fundin shook his head and made some despairing gesture before he stomped off to his rooms. Apparently he was through taking his sisters counsel on matters of romance, which Dísa was more than happy about. She’d tried to tell him, after all. She hadn’t a romantic bone in her body.

It was as she’d told Thráin (though it had been some weeks past, the conversation was still niggling at the back of her mind, especially when Thrór lay down beside her to sleep), she loved her husband. She’d always loved Thrór. She just wasn’t in love with him and never had been.

Which, she reminded herself, was perfectly natural. Many dwarves married or didn’t marry and simply lived alongside one another, without being in love. Many had _children_ without feeling a spark of passion for their partner. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it. Thrór certainly didn’t feel a lick of ardor for her and never had done. They had come in to the union as full adults, war heroes and dragonslayers with the blood of a beast still stuck in their scabbards. Neither of them had been cheated.

Love-matches were thrice-blessed. Not rare, but not exactly commonplace either. More usual was it for two dwarves, of an age, apprenticed together and masters of the same craft, to make a life together. Marriage, if they were wealthy. An understanding, if they were not. Equal parts practicality and tenderness.

This romance that Fundin and Halldóra were playing out was different. Two souls who couldn’t be more different falling head over heels for one another, struck to the heart by affection for one another that sprang from some source that had no name.

Or maybe not, Dísa reflected as she let herself into her family’s suite, then into the bath to wash the sweat off. Fundin and Dóra both had a natural sweetness to their dispositions that Dísa herself had never been possessed of. Eager to smile, eager to please. Fundin was quiet, she was garrulous...but they very often agreed. And though Dísa would never accuse her brother of being a font of wit and she thought Miss Dóra had rather too much wit for her own good, when Loni made a truly abysmal joke he’d picked up from some Men down at a tavern in Dale, they both laughed aloud while the rest of the table groaned.

The water was hot when Dísa shucked off her clothes and climbed in. She loosed her hair and beard from their braids letting the mop of black and silver hair flow down her back and chest until it was well sunk in the water. Then she took a deep breath and let herself sink to the bottom of the smooth-sided marble bathing tub.

In the heavy quiet afforded by the water, she found her mind drawn back and back to her wedding day. It was not a day she thought much on nor wanted much made of. _Give of him your hand,_ she heard and, aye, she hesitated.

To be Captain of the Guard was one thing, but to be Queen was quite another. Defend the home _at_ home, birth a child, sit at court and ignore the quickening of the blood that bade her eave her halls and _ride_.

Dísa had ever been a restless child, but the Queen Under the Mountain was to be as stone.

Something brushed her face under the water, quick as blinking she opened her eyes and seized it. Her eyes and body recognized it as Thrór immediately and rather than push him away as had been her first instinct, she pulled him in, robes and all.

Thrór was laughing and shaking water out of his hair when she sat up and took a breath. “I was wondering where you’d got to,” he said. “Then I looked at the trail of clothes and, well, I mightn’t be much of a tracker, but you made yourself easy to find.”

“And you made yourself easy to topple,” Dísa replied, looking around and taking in the water scattered all over the floor, not to mention the wet fur that Thrór tossed over the side of the tub. If the servants left live rats in their boots as comeuppance, she wouldn’t blame them in the slightest. “Why aren’t you abed?”

“Waiting on you, like a gallant,” Thrór winked, getting out of the rest of his wet things. She saw that his boots were already discarded by the door and the little imp had clearly been planning this. Despite her rather unhappy mood, Dísa couldn’t help giving Thrór a small smile, which he returned. “Turn around, your hair looks a mess.”

Dísa complied and Thrór set to work, lathering his hands with soap and oil, working the concoction through her hair from root to tip.

“Who needs handmaids, eh?” he asked idly, digging his fingers hard into her skull as he gave her a scrub.

“Not me,” she replied, drawing her legs up and balancing her arms atop them. Not that she could see her own expression, but she assumed her face had gone surly. Usually did when she was out of temper, apparently it was off-putting.

“You’ve got grass in your hair,” Thrór pointed out. “Been fighting?”

“Fundin. He...never you mind what he asked,” Dísa cut herself off a second too late because she had aroused her husband’s interest and Thrór was not one to let a matter go when it was one he had a particular interest in.

“About Dóra?” he asked and she swore she could feel the twinkle in his eyes boring a hole in the back of her head.

“She’s Dóra now, is she?” Dísa asked. “I suppose they could just skip right over courting and get married tomorrow, since she’s part of the family already.”

Thrór tsked and gave her hair a tug. “It’s what she likes being called, I asked - Halldóra’s a bit of a mouthful for the lass, isn’t it?”

“She speaks half a score languages,” Dísa pointed out. “I hardly think her own common name’s been a burden all these years.”

“You’re dissembling,” Thrór said with another tug to the back of her head. “What’d he want to know about? Courting, are they? Who’s telling Gróin, me or you?”

Shaking her head, Dísa replied flatly, “I don’t want to think about that, he’ll shout loud enough to shake the place to the bowels of the earth. Ugh. If Thráin gets it in him to - well. I won’t have to worry about that, he knows better than to ask me.”

Something in her tone struck Thrór oddly, but before he inquired he advised her, “Close your eyes,” before he gave one last mighty pull and submerged her head entirely underwater. When she resurfaced, he folded his arms over his chest and said, “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

Without sparing him a backward glance, Dísa hauled herself out of the bath and reached for a robe, hair dripping more puddles all over the floor, “There’s nothing - ”

“Of course there is,” her husband replied, easy as anything. Thrór gave himself a quick scrub while the water was still hot, but seemed to expect an answer. “Is it something Thráin’s done? Or are you not as easy as Fundin and Dóra as you’ve been letting on?”

“It was Thráin and it was nothing,” she replied shortly. “I’m going to bed.”

It took Thrór longer to get himself into the bedroom than it did for Dísa to get into bed and feign sleep, but that didn’t stop him from snuggling up along side of her and nudging her arm with his nose, like an overly affectionate pony seeking treats.

“Come on now, I know you’re pretending,” he said quietly. “Tell me what’s wrong. It’s clear whatever it is, it’s troubling you.”

“It’s…” she couldn’t say it wasn’t because it was. Had been and Thrór probably ought to know, as it concerned him too. “He said he was sure I never loved you. That’s all.”

Thrór sat bolt upright and turned toward Thráin’s bedroom door, flabbergasted. “That’s _all?_ That’s - I’ve got half a mind to charge in there and shake him.”

“Don’t you _dare,”_ Dísa rolled over and gave her husband a warning smack. “He’s cross enough when he’s slept the whole night through, nevermind dragging him out of bed at all hours.”

“Well that’s absurd,” Thrór muttered darkly, settling back down on his pillows. He wrapped his arms around his wife’s waist and tugged her tightly against him. “Absurd. I always thought that lad was brighter than me, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Mmm,” she grunted noncommittally. “Well. No proper courting. Didn’t gift you any presents, did I? Nor you me. And your going on about Fundin and Dóra getting a proper wedding. ‘Sides, I’m not exact...I don’t gush, do I?”

“Ey, now,” he said, lifting his head to look down at Dísa. She spoke with her eyes closed, facing the wall. The thickest of the blankets atop their bed was drawn up beneath her chin by her balled fists. “Now, now, now. Our son might be more than usually thick, but he doesn’t get it from me, does he? Listen - _listen._ You have always been my best and greatest friend. You’re my stalwart. You’ve stuck by me for going on two centuries, at my best and worst. You _married me._ You don’t have to say a word about it. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Obvious to me,” she said when she rolled over. Her eyes shone in the dark when she finally opened them and looked at him properly.

“And to me,” Thrór added, bending down to kiss her forehead. “And that’s all that matters.”

Dísa smiled and they both settled down to sleep. She rolled over and caught Thrór up in her arms, ready to go to sleep with her face half buried in his slightly damp hair. Just as she was drifting off he murmured, “You’ll have to tell me what your brother had to say about his lass in the morning.”

* * *

There would be nothing _to_ tell if Fundin did not find an advisor. At the moment, he was at a bit of a loss.

His sister was no help whatsoever where courting was concerned. He had no doubt that Thrór would be an enthusiastic advisor, but there was no accounting for his accuracy. Gróin was right out. Maeva was a possibility, but she was always so busy. For every sliver of good advice Loni gave, he handed out five tonnes of dross. And Fundin was not so desperate that he was about to apply to his nephews for counsel. Not yet, anyway.

And so he found himself once again in the library, but for the first time he was not seeking Halldora directly. It took him a few minutes to spot what appeared to be a librarian and one he had not seen flittering around the dining hall, whispering behind their hands. This dwarrowdam looked older than many of the others, with dark brown skin and well-kempt silver hair. It was still slightly embarrassing to ask a grandmotherly type for books about how one went about courting a lass, but less embarrassing than asking one who would immediately begin gossiping about his inquiry to their fellows.

“‘Scuse me, ma’am,” he whispered, trying very hard to keep his voice down - and one eye open, just in case Haldr was lurking around the stacks. Fundin had no idea what Dóra’s brother thought of him, though he had high hopes that, their mother being so down on him, Haldr might decide to like him out of spite. “Could you help me find something?”

“I’m not - ” she began, but the words died in her throat when she turned to face him. Fundin was used to being the recipient of a few odd looks here and there - once when he’d traveled to the Iron Hills with his sister and Thrór, he’d been stopped at the gate by an (admittedly slightly inebriated) guardsman who said that Men weren’t allowed to pass that far into the mountain - but rather than being somewhat taken aback by his height, the dwarrowdam smiled enormously and said, “As it happens, I’m free at the moment. What is it you need?”

Fundin smiled and put a hand to the back of his neck somewhat awkwardly, “Er...have you got anything recently done up on… _courting?”_

The last word was spoken in a whisper with an accompanying flush of cheeks that made the dwarrowdam’s smile deepen along with the creases around her eyes. “Do you know, I believe our _most_ recent publication may have been removed, but we have others in the lending library - four stories up. I can take you if you like.”

“That would be good, thanks,” Fundin stammered a little awkwardly. Her manner was all graciousness, but he was conscious of a certain something behind the eyes, a glimmer of either mischief or warning, he couldn’t quite decide between the two. Fundin nevertheless followed him when she beckoned him along, leaving the pile of books she had been puzzling over on a nearby table.

“So,” she said when they were a few paces out of the library doors. “You’re the famous - or shall I say _in_ famous, in these parts - Fundin Farinul.”

Fundin faltered a step, but the lady continued walking along sedately. “Er…I am,” he replied. “But if it’s about that late book, I was told it was all taken care of - ”

The lady turned and smiled at him again, not so sharply this time. She seemed to find him amusing, which was better than being thought stupid, he supposed, so he’d take a good opinion where he could get it.

“I’m not actually a librarian,” she confided. “Any more than Halldóra is, though she’s far less fussy about working for free than I am - I’m called Sága, I do hope she’s mentioned me once or twice.”

She had. She absolutely had and Fundin was unspeakably grateful that the ‘dam’s demeanor was far more pleasant than outwardly disapproving. At first, he thought Sága was merely a fellow scribe, but after the conversation they’d had the night before, Fundin realized that the only time Dóra mentioned fond memories from her childhood, they had to do with Master Sága. It was clear that, even if she didn’t say the words, Dóra thought more kindly on this dwarf and loved her better than she did her mother and therefore, Fundin thought he would do well to gain her good opinion.

“She has, ma’am,” he said, doing his damnedest to match his strides with hers. “More than that. Erm. She talks about you very often. Erm…”

This happened tolerably often, finding himself at a total loss for words in front of someone he wanted to make a good impression upon. More often since meeting Dóra; most warriors he knew were happy to let his axes speak for him before they formed an opinion. Scribes, as it turned out, required more careful handling.

“I am very pleased to hear it, though I fear you exaggerate,” Sága smiled, opening a door with beautiful glasswork in the center pane, beckoning Fundin along to follow her inside. Her office was much bigger than Dóra’s and far less cluttered. A bearskin rug warmed the stones in the center of the room and the multitude of scrolls and books were stacked neatly on shelves. “She’s spoken about very little save you these last months. I cannot tell you how pleased I am that you’ve found one another.”

“I hope it was all - erm. Beg pardon?”

This was new. This was different. And Fundin was not quite sure how to respond. He’d dealt with open hostility (by employing his fists), with derision (by stammering and making himself look a fool), and one remarkably unhelpful sister (by throwing his hands up and stomping off in frustration). Yet he’d never actually heard that anyone was sincerely happy for either of them. He was rather taken aback.

Fortunately, Sága took it all in stride.

“Halldóra is very dear to me,” she informed him fondly. “I’ve known her since she was very small and I’ve never seen her quite so happy as she is now - barring one or two incidents, which I believe are all brushed up. Water under the dam, as it were.”

“More or less, aye,” Fundin nodded, nervously. Gróin was making as clear an effort to keep his tongue in his head where Dóra was concerned, mostly by not talking to her or about her at all, but he’d taken to nodding at her and bidding her a good day when they saw one another in passing, which Fundin took to be a good sign. At this point, he believed that his brother’s reticence where Dóra was concerned had more to do with lingering embarrassment on Gróin’s part for his prior, rather than continued disapproval. “She...she makes me...happy. As well. I’ve never...known anyone like her and she’s...quite a girl.”

“Aye,” Sága nodded. “Quite a girl. And from what I’ve heard, you’re quite a lad.”

Fundin bobbed his head vaguely a few times, expecting a recitation of the honors he’d earned himself in the few short years he’d been campaigning, ready to brush them off with a shrug and a comment about how he learned from the best and all that, so he was very much surprised when Sága continued.

“She says you’re very kind,” the dwarrowdam told him. “And honest. Hardworking. And terribly loving toward your little nephews, your family. But the kindness is what she always talks about. I don’t mean to discourage you, but I hope you know that any courting gift will fall rather short of having Halldóra bestow upon you her good opinion.”

Touched to the heart, Fundin could only stammer, “I-I know. Ma’am. I do know, she’s...a treasure. But I thought a few hairclasps might do. For formality’s sake.”

Sága laughed and made a little shooing motion toward the door, “They might at that. Well, then, off with you. It’s been a pleasure meeting you, I don’t mean to keep you...but as a word of advice, I believe the book you seek is located down the hall around the left corner, four doors down.”

Fundin took her hand warmly and bade her good evening, feeling so light and warm inside he might have been walking on air. This time when he knocked on Dóra’s office door, he remembered to duck.

“I’ve come seeking a book,” he said in a teasing tone, leaning into the office with his hands braced on the doorframe above his head.

“You’ve come to the right place,” Dóra said, gesturing at the chaos behind her with her left hand. She was hiding something behind her back with her right. “What is it you’ve come seeking?”

“Oh, something very particular,” Fundin informed her, the gravity of his tone belied by the silly smile on his face. “All about lovemaking - written recently, someone’s sneaked it out of the library, but then, you know everything, so I thought I might ask you.”

Shoulders hitching with repressed giggles, Dóra took the book out from behind her back and held its gilt embossed title under Fundin’s nose. “This little volume suit your fancy?”

“Aye, that’d do it,” he said and made to snatch it. Then, he withdrew his hand and seemingly thought better of it. “Then again, I’m a slow reader. Could be at it all night and as I just said you do know _everything…”_

Dóra tossed the book aside where it landed atop a precariously wobbling stack, though it didn’t manage to topple the lot. Instead of taking the book in hand, Fundin took Dóra in his arms and picked her up off the floor. She loosely crossed her arms about his neck and leaned forward to kiss his nose sweetly.

“That part of the book?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Shaking her head, Dóra gave him a very coy look and replied, “I thought that up all by my lonesome.”

“When’d you pick that up, anyway?”

“Just before supper.”

“And when’d you finish it?”

Pulling him more tightly around the shoulders, Dóra leaned her head forward until their brows were touching. She looked up at him through her dark eyelashes and said, “Just after supper.”

“And was it educational?” Fundin asked, holding her close as he could, not moving his face away, breathing her in.

Dóra nodded slightly without pulling back. “Aye. But a trifle formulaic. Apparently there were vows that ought to have been made that we’ve quite forgotten. You must come to me bearing silver, along with an offer of love. That you ought to have done last night, but I’m afraid I am holding you to your word, with nary a piece of silver to remind me of what you said. I _think_ that’s alright, I have a long memory.”

“And if you’d forgotten, I’ll say it again,” Fundin replied, punctuating his words with a peppering of kisses over her cheeks, brow, nose, and mouth. “I. Love you. Utterly. Completely. I’m besotted. Actually.”

Dóra giggled, unwittingly baring her throat for further attention when she threw her head back. “Oh! And I must say, the feeling is - _oh!_ entirely mutual.”

Fundin pulled back and made the most charmingly put-out expression at her. “Can’t you say it back?”

“I haven’t any silver,” Dóra protested innocently, then captured Fundin’s lower lip with both of hers when he stuck it out at her. “But since we’re not following form very strictly, allow me to say that I love you too. From top to toe. You are the kindest and best of souls I’ve ever known. And I’m so very…shite.”

She trailed off, eyes filling with tears. Dóra looked away and bit her lip after swearing softly. Fundin thought she’d never been more utterly loveable. “You’re so very shite…” he prompted her and managed to make her laugh.

“I was going to say something rather unkind about myself and that will only make you cross,” she said, wiping a sleeve quickly over her face. “So I shall only say I consider myself very, very fortunate.”

“No more fortunate than I am,” Fundin replied honestly. “I can’t imagine anyone better Made than you. **‘Hewn all of marble she was, yet of such beauty was she possessed that she dulled the very brightest of diamonds’”**

Dóra went very pink in the cheeks, but went on, “' **Her eye upon him was kind and she loved him so that she forgave his errors and took him in her arms, at once restored; for pity and beauty moved the great heart above to sorrow and groaning, set His great hammer to ringing and…'** Oh, that’s not fair. For you haven’t erred and you’ve left me Roan’s folly and the Maker’s grief to finish with. I’ll have to recite the whole thing to find a line in which to pay you a fair compliment.”

“Or you could just cede this bout to me,” Fundin offered reasonably. “And own I’ve beaten you this time. Or...we could continue the game somewhere more comfortable.”

The offer was tempting - how tempting! - but Dóra’s eyes flickered down to the etiquette book and she sighed lightly. “I wasn’t joking about not having gold or silver. I would like to give you _something.”_

“You are bounty and gift enough, all by yourself,” Fundin reassured her, but Dóra shook her head and indicated that she’d like to be put down. He complied, a little reluctantly.

“No, but really,” Dóra fretted. “I’ve been wracking my brain all day trying to think of something to give you - something that would be useful, but I’m not a mason or a smith and if I copied out a sonnet for you, you wouldn’t read it.”

“I’d…” Fundin didn’t want to lie to her, but though he would certainly _admire_ a hand copied poem, he likely wouldn’t actually give it a thorough going over very often. “You’re right.”

“See?” Dóra threw her hands up, tucking her hair behind her ears distractedly. “And I was thinking and thinking and that book was _no_ help whatsoever really because in order to be properly courting and...the rest of what that entails, there has to be _some_ exchange and I’ll bet you’ve got that all sorted out on your end, haven’t you?”

Shaped, cooled, and ready for carving, in fact. But she didn’t need to know that.

“I had a few ideas…” Fundin said, then snapped his fingers, excited to have thought of a solution before Dóra. “Serenade! What about that? Common courting practice and you’ve got a lovely voice and I’d like that. I’m requesting it, in fact. When I come to ply my suit - if you’re amenable and accept it - in returned, I would like to be serenaded.”

It was a very neat solution and one whose terms, Dóra could fulfill more or less easily - if she was playing, it would make her feel slightly less self-conscience than singing all by herself for such a small, captive audience had.

“Very well,” she agreed. “I’ll play and sing when you’ve finished your gift - if you think that’s comparable.”

“I do,” Fundin assured her. “In fact, if you try to gift me silver or gold or anything of that sort, I’ll be mightily offended and I might not accept it. I might take my gift back!”

“Ah!” Dóra wagged a warning finger at him. “I’ve got a long memory. And you’ve said you loved me twice now.”

“Well, let’s make it three. For luck,” Fundin bent down to kiss her again. “I love you. And I’d _never_ take that back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had SUCH A BLOCK with this chapter, probably because I made Dísa be a little bit vulnerable and she HATES that. But we all got through it in the end. Just one more thing to get through with the lovebirds...


	18. Chapter Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** THERE IS **SEX** IN THIS CHAPTER. **AWKWARD, FIRST TIME, CISHET, M/F, SEMI-EXPLICIT HAIRY DWARF SEX.** If you'd rather not read about pre-marital AWKWARD dwarf sex, just stop scrolling after Dóra finishes singing. And Loni uses a dirty word.

Dóra had never been particular about her appearance. So long as her hair was up and out of her face and her beard wasn’t frizzing horribly out of arrangement, she assumed she looked presentable enough to go out in public. Now she sat in front of the rarely used looking glass in her bedroom, fretting and frowning at her face in the glass.

Her slightly fuzzy face. She looked like a watercolor.

Sighing, she retrieved her tortoiseshell glasses from their case and set them on her nose, silently lamenting the fact that they would have to do for more than just reading. Common curse of their race, bad eyes that crept up on one over time, ruining them for anything other than close crafting. Usually the myopia set in only after one passed their hundredth birthday, but Dóra supposed she’d always been a bit of an early achiever. Just one more milestone to check off, though one that was considerably less vaunted than attaining her mastery or finding herself a beaux to court.

“So, have you had the guardsman?”

Dóra almost fell off her chair when Haldr barged into her room without knocking (to be fair, the door hadn’t been closed, but courtesy was courtesy) and broke his own rule about after dinner silence.

“Oh, pardon me,” he said, in a tone that implied he wasn’t talking about the intrusion or the impertinence of the question. His eyes skittered over the assortment of brushes and combs laid out before her and the open jar of vanilla-scented hair oil that was practically empty. “You’re _going_ to have the guardsman.”

If Halldóra was not very angry with her brother still, she might have rounded upon him, horrified for sticking his nose into so private a matter, but she was still too upset to be bothered about impropriety. She ought to have burned her mother’s letter, the spectre of it still haunted her, just when she was about to fall asleep at night, she’d hear her voice hissing in her ear, _“I need not remind you that such a thing would be disappointing to me in the extreme,”_ and feel phantom fingers pinching her arm.

“Why do you want to know?” Dóra shot back, not looking directly at him since she could see him well enough in her mirror. “Are you planning on writing Amad about it? I wouldn’t if I were you; she’d descend upon us to put an end to it and you’d have to put her up.”

“Would she?” he asked, his tone deceptively steady. Dóra knew it was a deception because Haldr was never _actually_ calm about anything and when he acted with anything resembling placidity she knew it was a ruse.

“Come to Erebor? Probably, even the _mention_ of a…particular friend of mine got her to write to me unprompted, if you told her I’d taken up with him,” Dóra was very proud of herself for neither blushing nor tripping over the words ‘taken up,’ “no doubt she’d _walk_ if she had to.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt she’d rise out of the depths like Durin’s Bane and devour us all in unholy fire,” Haldr replied, folding his arms and eying his sister critically. “I was asking you if she _would_ end it. Will end it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, stupidly because, of course, she knew exactly what he meant. She was of age and had not abided in the same household, or even the same mountain range, as her mother in more than ten years, but in many ways it made little difference for the longest time. For years after Dómarra took herself East, Dóra demurred invitations to spend time with the apprentices after working hours because she knew her mother would not have approved. She put herself to bed at the same time that she had been bidden to ever since she was twenty-five and woke hours before most of the dwarves in the scriptorium were up and about to avoid any unnecessary interruptions. Nevermind the fact that she was not bothered by and even welcomed the friendly conversation of scribes just arriving for work.

The first time she delayed work on a manuscript in favor of seeing a theatrical with Gílla and her husband, she spent the entirety of the first act convinced that something terrible was going to happen to her for putting pleasure above work. Nothing of the sort occurred, of course and so the next week she very shyly agreed to go along on a trip to Dale when she was asked. It took all day and she didn’t copy a single line or read a single book and she tucked herself into bed with a novel about a family of jewelers with five daughters and the amusing situations that arose when they were courted by half of the populace under the range where they lived. It was breezy and light-hearted and Dóra never felt more like a degenerate in all her days. A breathtaking change of pace.

But, of course, her mother knew nothing about it, though she must have suspected when she wrote with barely-concealed frustration about how often Dóra mentioned ‘friends’ as opposed to ‘colleagues’ in her missives and that she supposed it was no great waste of ink, given the fact that she could not be expending significant quantities of it in work. It did not take long for Dóra to stop mentioning anything to her mother that held the slightest taint of frivolity.

So it was with Fundin. He made her enormously happy and therefore she knew her mother would give her enormous grief about him. But now she knew, and she was concerned, and Dóra did not trust that she would be lucky enough to find her mother’s attention diverted by another matter. Dómarra always said that Halldóra was her most important piece of work. When she was a child, she enjoyed hearing such things, she took it as a mark of her mother’s affection. Now she knew well she was just another project and one that was not turning out to Dómarra’s satisfaction.

She had never known her mother to drop unsatisfying work; she just kept battering at it until she moulded it into something useful.

Despite her ire, she knew Haldr had a point. Silence or honesty, neither would satisfy her mother the way denial would. Dóra didn’t want to lie and she did not want to deny Fundin. Not for all the world. Not when she loved him and he said he loved her.

“Well?” Haldr drummed his fingers impatiently on the top of her vanity, expecting an answer. She was usually much quicker than this.

“She’d try,” Dóra mumbled, spinning her silver hairbrush on its back by the handle. “She’s very persistent.”

“She’s a leech,” Haldr supplied, as ever critical when his sister was circumspect. “A bloodsucker of the worst order, of _course_ she’ll try. The question that needs to be answered is whether or not she will succeed. If you answer in the affirmative, I’d not bother fussing with your hair; as she said in the letter, there’s no point wasting time on an affection that will go nowhere. Of course, I think there’s no point in wasting time on affections in any case, but then we’ve always been different, haven’t we? But to the point: Would she succeed?”

 _Why are you asking me?_ Dóra wanted to ask. _It isn’t up to me, she does as she pleases._

But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? She was of age now, living a life that was, on the surface, entirely separate from her mother’s. Dómarra’s opinion of Fundin had no bearing on Halldóra’s pursual of Fundin. It was not for her to allow or approve or any of it. She was a high-born lady, a master of her craft, an independent personage in the eyes of the law. And she’d been losing sleep over the thought that her mother disapproved of her suitor.

On the face of it, the very thought of it was absurd. What, after all, could Dómarra do? She could hardly bundle her up in a sack and pack her off to the Iron Hills - not that Dóra put it past her to _try_ , but Thrór would object, she was sure. At the very least, he would be put out to have lost two court scribes within months of one another. What was she so afraid of?

That was not a difficult question to answer. It was not the notion of kidnapping that made her stomach turn over or sent a trickle of dread down her spine. It was the idea that she would one day stand before her mother, look her in the eye, see her frown and hear the words, _”Oh, child. You do disappoint me.”_

Such a little thing to be afraid of, words. But then words were her life.

So, the true question was this: Did she value Fundin’s love more than she feared her mother’s disappointment?

Dóra turned away from the glass and looked up at Haldr over the top of her spectacles. “No,” she said, her voice steadier than she expect. “She would not.”

Haldr grinned and patted her on the head, spoiling an hour’s hard work. “Good girl,” he nodded. “Even if your guardsman is an imbecile, he seems like a good sort of imbecile. I approve.”

The confident look she leveled at her brother turned incredulous.

“You _do?”_ she asked in utter disbelief. “Are you…but why would you write to her in the first place, if not to prompt her to interfere?”

“Because, sister dearest, I too am, on occasion, an imbecile,” Haldr replied airily, giving her another hearty pat upon the head. “Which is why I so readily forgive in others the faults I am burdened with myself. In an attempt to give grief to our mother, I inadvertently brought greater grief to you and for that I apologize.”

Dóra was momentarily speechless. Haldr rarely apologized for anything. That he would do so now was incredible, even if it had taken the better part of two weeks for him to get around to it.

“Ah - apology accepted,” she said after an uncomfortable pause. “I suppose it was to be expected, you never miss an opportunity to vex her and hearing that I had a - a fellow would be awfully vexing, I’m sure.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t the part about you having a lad that I thought would really upset her,” he said, turning on his heel and making his way out, presumably to his own rooms and silence. “Rather, I meant to frustrate her with the fact that you’ve been so very happy and she can’t abide your happiness. Anyway, have a good evening. Pray, don’t feel the need to confide any particulars to me on the morrow.”

“I won’t!” Dóra called after him, blushing at last, but he made no answer and once again silence reigned once again as law in their home. Exhaling, she took up her hairbrush again and focused all her energy on trying to make herself look comely. Worry about what her mother had to say about things could wait; the evening was for herself and Fundin alone.

* * *

After the Guard finished drilling for the day, Fundin availed himself of the baths for a bit of companionable cleanliness. Most of his comrades went to dinner, but he was so nervous, he wasn’t sure he could eat.

“Anything that could put you off supper’s got to be serious,” Loni said when he announced his intentions of joining his brother-in-arms for a scrub and a soak. “Seems to me you could use a bit of moral support.”

The baths were an elaborate affair for the high-born of Erebor. Deep marble tubs were filled with steaming orders to make ready the skin for massaging with hot rocks and precious oils. For a sizeable tip, the hairdressers would brave the steam and the heat to plait and arrange one’s hair and beard for festive occasions. Fundin didn’t need to go that far; he only wanted to be clean enough that if his nerves let him to start sweating through his clothes, he wouldn’t smell too offensive.

“Well, the gift’s fine,” Loni said, not requiring any unusual skills of perception to know what was on Fundin’s mind. “Let’s just hope the presentation doesn’t put her off.”

“Mmm,” Fundin hummed vaguely, scrubbing his skin hard with soap. He’d waved off the attendants who’d come forward, convinced they weren’t going to do a thorough enough job.

“Careful there,” Loni remarked, beard twitching in amusement over Fundin’s vigor. “Don’t want to rub all your hair off, you’ll look like a summer sheep.”

Fundin did not look up through his sodden hair falling in wet black sheets over his face as he repeated, “Mmm.”

“I think you’re making a great deal of fuss over summat that’s really nothing at all,” Loni continued, breezily. “She either accepts it or she doesn’t.”

“You think she won’t accept it?” Fundin asked. By the Maker, he’d considered a thousand little ways he might catastrophically botch the evening, not a one had to do with his craft; he was confident enough in his handiwork that the rejection of his gift never even occurred to him.

“What? No!” Loni replied quickly. “Naught of the sort, I just thought you were getting yourself all upset over whether she’d like the quality of your carving. I was going to say, even if she finds your present acceptable, you might think hers is rubbish.”

Fundin gave him a look of deepest skepticism. “Not possible.”

Loni raised an eyebrow. “Eh?”

“That I’d reject her gift, it isn’t possible, I know it’s not, I requested it especially,” Fundin clarified, scouring the dirt and soot from under his fingernails, an impossible task, but he was determined to do his absolutely best at it.

His clarification seemed only to confuse his friend further.

“So...if you’re all set to accept each other’s gifts, I don’t see what the - oh. _Oh.”_ A light went on behind Loni’s eyes. He grinned hugely and waggled his eyebrows up and down suggestively. “You’re all set to _accept each other’s gifts._ I see. Ah. Well, then, scrub on! Nevermind me, I hadn’t any idea you two were going about it like that, I thought it was serious.”

“It is serious, I don’t...what do you mean?” Fundin asked, mouth hanging open in dismay. He’d dealt with Loni’s teasing, his nephews’ ire, his brother’s scorn, his sister’s sword at his throat and Thrór’s repeated offers to hire _minstrels_ (where were seeming more and more like threats), and now his friend had the gall to suggest he wasn’t serious?

Loni shrugged carelessly, sinking down into the water up to his chin. “Well...having at it. Setting the hammer to the anvil. Fucking, you know. Usually when the gifts are pretense, it’s all just a friendly lark between sheets, nothing that’ll be set in stone. Nothing _wrong_ with that, I just got a feeling that you were well in it.”

“I am well - keep your voice down, would you?” Fundin demanded, feeling a flush creep up his neck. Loni hadn’t been speaking particularly loudly, but he couldn’t help feeling as though everyone in the room (all five of them, including attendants) were staring at him and drinking in every word. “It’s not a _pretense_ , not all all. I just know there’s nothing she could give to me that I wouldn’t take.”

Loni appeared stunned and Fundin didn’t wonder about that. Theirs was a people that set great stock in craft, in skill and to have essentially declared aloud that Halldóra might just hand him some rock that wormed its way into her boot for a gift and he would take it as if it was a great treasure meant that, as Loni speculated, he was ‘well in it.’

A whistle escaped the red-haired dwarrow lad’s mouth and his following sigh sent ripples out across the steaming water.

“That’s...quite a thing to say,” he said, impressed and a little overwhelmed. “She - ah - she feels the same, eh? I’d hate to think you were arse over head for her and she was being a bit more sensible.”

“I think so,” Fundin mumbled, embarrassed to be having such a personal discussion in public. He didn’t come from a family that discussed their feelings...ever, aye, ‘ever’ would be about accurate, and was unused to laying bare his heart in a public bath. “She has said she loves me. So that’s that.”

Loni slipped off the stone bench and went right under the water. He came up, choking and spluttering so hard that Fundin thumped his back to clear his lungs.

“Hammer and tongs!” he cursed, whether at Fundin or at himself was unclear. After another half minute of coughing, he was breathing clearly enough to say, “I’d have thought - flowers and wood and metal and stone, but you two don’t hold by custom, do you? Love and taking gifts sight unseen…”

Fundin held himself stiffly, ready for the barrage of commentary, ‘You’re too young,’ ‘Isn’t this all going rather quickly?’ ‘You haven’t known the lass above half a year.’ He was prepared to get out of the water and stalk back to his home, damp clothes clinging to him, beard dripping water, but Loni’s face broke out into the most enormous grin Fundin had ever seen.

“Muhudel!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms up enthusiastically, scattering water every which way. “I wish you all the best, you and your little bird. Why not, indeed! No reason, that’s why not!”

Rather than Fundin taking himself out of the baths, Loni excused himself, still smiling like a loon. “Best of luck!” he said, wrapping himself in a robe. “And I want to hear all about it on the morrow.”

“You won’t!” Fundin vowed, then sunk down a bit in the water because he was _definitely_ being stared at now.

Hours later, dry and dressed in his own chambers, he was pacing in front of the doorway. The minutes seemed to tick by more slowly when he was sitting and though he considered occupying himself until she came, Fundin had a feeling that the right tone might be difficult to achieve if Dóra walked in to the sight of him polishing one of his axes. The gesture might lack a certain subtlety, if nothing else.

A knock on the great stone doors made him twitch a little and he found himself awash in a hundred anxieties, _What if it’s not her? What if it is her? What if it’s Dísa and the Mountain’s under siege and I’m called to battle? What if it’s Gróin?_

The last thought made him so nervous that he wrenched the door open with one great heave, worried that if he delayed a moment more, he might try to shut himself into the weapons cupboard which would not only be a tight squeeze, but also very dangerous and he wasn’t sure it was possible to open the thing from the inside -

“Oh,” he said, looking down at Dóra as if he was surprised to find her there at all. “It’s you.”

It certainly was her. Fundin could not help himself, he stared at her prettily plaited hair and beard that had been brushed until it shone brightly with just the smallest hints of gold and copper here and there in the torchlight. She was wearing her spectacles, but the light that gleamed off them only served to make her eyes look brighter. Her coat was cut close and very comely, a shade of dark blue with silver embroidery. Under her arm she was carrying the case for her fiddle and a smile was on her lips, though at Fundin’s clumsy address her brow wrinkled and she looked as nervous as he felt.

“Erm...am I early?” she asked, sounding astonished.

He had no clear idea what time it was, or what day it was. Little things like hours and dates did not seem so important when Dóra was around. He’d passed whole days and evenings with her and was loathe to let her leave at the end, unsatisfied, feeling he’d not spent nearly enough time with her.

“Probably not,” he said finally and smiled. She tittered and did not look half so nervous when he joked with her.

“True,” she admitted ruefully. “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long...may I come in?”

Sometimes Fundin forgot that he effectively blocked the way into the house when only one of the doors was open. “Of course, come in...there’s a form to this, isn’t there?”

He’d tried, honestly _tried_ to read the book of courtship once she’d given it to him, but damn him if he could remember a word of it now.

“There is,” Dóra said when she entered the house and Fundin shut the door behind her. “Shall I prompt you?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” he replied, fighting the urge to run his hands through his hair or tug his beard. He’d taken care with his appearance and didn’t want to muss it all just yet. From the way Dóra’s eyes lingered on his neatly braided beard and his shoulders under his coat, she appreciated the effort. The one and only piece of courting advice he’d taken from Loni was to wear a coat that was just a mite too tight along the back - when Fundin asked why, he’d only said, ‘Trust me,’ and it seemed to have been advice well worth heeding.

“I _believe_ you say that you humbly request my kind indulgence in surveying some work of yours that you hope might meet with my approval,” she informed him, playfully. “Then _I_ say that nothing would please me more and I would be honored to look over the work of your own hands.”

Fundin nodded gravely. “Made something for you,” he paraphrased. “Want to take a look?”

“Sounds good,” Dóra agreed, just as solemnly before she lost her composure and smiled at him, mischief in her eyes. When she held out her hand, Fundin took it and led her over to the low table before the fire upon which he laid out the clasps on a piece of velvet cloth, so they wouldn’t be scratched.

There were eight pieces in all, two larger claps, four smaller beads and two combs which had been the trickiest by far to cast. They were all carved with curling patterns, reminiscent of rising smoke, save the combs that were moulded to look like feathers - quills to be specific, which were conspicuously absent from Dóra’s hair that night.

She noticed immediately and picked one up with a crow of delight. “Oh! How _marvelous_ , you’re wonderful! Oh, that’s so clever, I _adore_ them, Fundin, _thank you!”_

He thought he might never stop smiling. “Want me to braid them in for you?”

Dóra nodded eagerly and turned around, pulling out the clasps and pins holding her arrangement in place. It seemed a pity to let it all unravel so soon after she arrived when she’d clearly made an effort to look her best, but Fundin’s attention was quickly distracted by the dark waves that fell and bounced down her back as she let her hair down.

He ran his fingers through her hair gently, under the pretense of smoothing tangles. Like many dwarrowdams, Dóra wore her hair very long indeed, the ends of her curls fell to the lowest part of her back and her beard came to her shoulders. Suddenly, he was reluctant to put it all back up again, preferring to leave it loose and hanging, but he’d offered to braid her hair and it would not do to go back on his word.

Fundin worked slowly, savoring the feeling of her smooth, soft hair between his fingers. His own hair was coarser by far, but easier to plait. Even so, he didn’t mind spending the extra time to smooth down strands that wanted to spring out and surround Dóra’s head like a soft brown halo. When his hands brushed her neck, he felt her heart fluttering in a pulse point just beneath her skin and his own heartbeat picked up in response.

When she turned around so he could admire his handiwork, Fundin thought, as he had that first day he’d seen her, that she was beauty itself to him. Others mightn’t think so. Too small, too thin, he’d heard some of the Guard say when they thought he was out of earshot. Golden hair was the most desirable and her eyes were the color of earth, not gemstones. But Fundin found her slight form fitted perfectly against him and when her spectacles were laid aside and he was kissing her he saw bits of gold in her brown eyes. She looked so softly at him and smiled so sweetly; how could he find her anything other than the very image of loveliness?

“Ah, that was a poor choice,” he said fondly, running a thumb over Dóra’s cheek. She caught his wrist and nuzzled her face against his hand.

“Why?” she asked, a little line appearing between her eyebrows. “Don’t they look alright?”

Fundin bent low and kissed the line away. “You’re far too comely for them,” he told her, making an effort to sound cross and failing. “You put my work to shame.”

Dóra laughed and kissed him back before he straightened his back. “You’re so sweet,” she said, raising a hand to touch one of the beads. “And if that’s a ploy to make me give them back, it won’t work, I love them far too dearly, especially the combs.”

“It’s no ploy, just the honest truth,” Fundin said, swinging her up into his arms. When Dóra stood still while he arranged her hair, she set her fiddle down on the table beside the cloth, he glanced at it now and nodded toward it. “If you accept my courting-gift, I think - following form - that I’m to be offered a token for acceptance.”

“Acceptance or refusal,” Dóra corrected him.

“No, I’m fairly sure it’s acceptance,” Fundin insisted.

“I can hardly play if you don’t put me down,” she pointed out, wrapping her arms around his neck and bringing her chest flush against his. Her spectacles were crooked when she looked at him, false innocence in her face. “And I must admit, I’m very comfortable like this, seems a shame to spoil it.”

“A sore shame,” Fundin agreed as he put her down on her feet. “And I’m sure you’ll make up for it.”

Dóra giggled, not at all put out that her transparent act to delay singing for him had not the slightest effect.

“Very well,” she said, opening the case and setting rosin to the bow. “I thought, since we were talking about tales we liked in the autumn and Roan and his Beloved was mentioned a few times and it’s one you know by heart that you might like a song about them - I hope I haven’t assumed incorrectly. I did comb the archives to find one that’s slightly obscure, though not unheard of, of course. I’m sure every song that was written of their love has been played a dozen times at least in my lifetime - nay, more than that, a hundred, but some are more popular than others, I hope you don’t mind that it’s brief, but I do think it’s pretty and...erm.”

Fundin sat down in one of the armchairs by the fire and smiled at her, indulgently, as if she wasn’t spouting nonsense, but instead spoke the most fascinating musical analysis he’d ever heard. He was very good about not seeming irritated when she prated on and on about nothing.

Drawing in a deep breath, Dóra took up her instrument and set the bow to the strings. After a few measures where sorrowful notes sang out in the quiet suite, she began to sing.

“Weep you no more sad fountain  
What need you flow so fast?  
Look how the snowy mountains  
Heaven’s sun doth gently waste.

But my sun’s heavenly eyes  
View not your weeping  
That now lies sleeping  
Softly, softly, now softly.  
Softly lies sleeping.”

It was quite a sad song to sing and as she recited the verses, Dóra suddenly wondered why she had been so maudlin as to choose a song about Roan carrying the frozen body of his beloved out of the mountain passage where she met her end, the jewels she had gone to her death to fetch for him still clenched in her stiff hands. Clearly she had no idea how to go about courting, despite reading a book all about it and despite Fundin’s assurance that he was going to accept whatever she had to give to him, he was probably going to usher her out, wondering why his love for her should make her want to sing a song that was full of tears.

Incredibly, when she was done and lay the fiddle by, he was still smiling.

“That was beautiful,” Fundin said, opening his arms to her and bidding her come close. “And, as it happens, I’ve never heard it before. You’ll have to play it again. Over and over; it’s my new favorite song.”

Dóra flung herself into his arms and Fundin caught her, setting her on his lap she kissed him, relief practically pouring off her. “Halfway through I was convinced I’d made a terrible mistake and ought to have gone with something more jolly.”

“I would have been happy with anything,” Fundin told her. “But that was...it was beautiful. I don’t know as many words as you, you’ll have to be satisfied with beautiful.”

“It’s as good a word as any,” she assured him. “If you think it’s fitting.”

“I do,” he nodded, kissing her deeply, one of his great big hands cupping the side of her face.

Dóra could have stayed in that chair with Fundin forever, she thought. Nowhere felt more like home to her than the circle of his arms, no sound was dearer to her than his voice and no one - not one person in all her life - made her feel as loved as he did. It was a heady feeling; she could become drunk on it, she was sure.

But as pleasant an activity as kissing in armchairs could be, it was a trifle restrictive in some ways and as they lost themselves in each other, the fire burned lower and lower in the hearth; the hour was quite late. When cinders smouldered beside them, Fundin pulled away and looked Dóra in the eyes.

“Do you want to?” he asked quietly.

She did not hesitate to nod, arm squeezing tightly around the back of his neck. “I do,” she replied.

Fundin needed no further encouragement. He got up, taking Dóra in his arms, and carried her all the way upstairs to the door of his bedroom - where he promptly set her down on her feet so that he could open the door. Kicking it open had occurred to him, but that would raise uncomfortable questions from the locksmith who would have to come and replace the strike plate about precisely why he had to ruin the door to get into his unlocked bedroom. And it was that Fundin did not carry his beloved over the threshold; he walked in and she followed half a pace behind.

The servants left a few lamps burning and Dóra took stock of the place as he trimmed the wicks. The only book she saw was the courting guide, laid face down on a table by his bed; she fought the urge to run over and mark the place he’d left off with a ribbon to save the poor thing’s spine. The shelves instead were lined with tools of his trade, small decorative blades and daggers, as well as little keepsakes and treasures that she told herself to get a better look at when there was light and time to spend in perusing.

There were a pair of framed portraits on the mantle that caught her eye and she rose up on her toes to squint at them. There was one figure in each frame, a dwarf with Fundin’s broad brow and fine nose (though his appeared to have been badly broken more than once) and a striking dwarrowdam with black hair and blue eyes. His parents, of course. The parents he did not remember, but whose memory he honored here in ink and gilding.

She nearly thought of her own parents, but wrenched her thoughts away at once; it would positively destroy her good spirits. The bed she looked at instead and it was instantly diverting; much larger than hers, longer too, better sized for Men than Dwarves, she thought. Very conspicuous. Both of them stared at it, though Dóra thought Fundin had less reason to do so than she did; he saw it every day, after all.

Fundin raised a hand to the neck of his coat then, seeing that Dóra made no motion to disrobe, brought his hand to his side again, unsure how to proceed. She caught the motion out of the corner of her eye, then her eyes widened and she seemed to remember why they were there and it was not to marvel at the furniture.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, hands fluttering uncertainly before the landed on the belt holding the waist of her coat closed. “Of course.” And she unbuckled it, letting it fall to the floor with a graceless clatter.

Then it became sort of a race. An unspoken race where neither party wanted the other to be very much more unclothed than they were because it felt a bit unsporting. Elegant coats were thrown off and fell to the ground in a heap. Tunics got caught on hair clasps and were struggled with before they two joined twin piles of boots, coats, belts, stockings, bracelets, necklaces, rings and small clothes. Until the two were a little breathless, but unclad, save for the new hair ornaments Dóra had not removed and the rings that pierced their skin.

As Dóra set about removing her gifts with a good deal more care than she’d shown to her clothes and other jewelry, Fundin turned down the sheets, wishing he’d thought to warm the blankets which had gone cold since he left the bed so many hours before. He brushed his hands over them a few times to impart some warmth, but only succeeded in drying his damp palms.

A light sigh caught his ear and Dóra approached the bed, shyly.

“So…” she said because she was incapable of keeping her lips together for more than five seconds at a time. “Shall we...I don’t really know what to...how to...what one...I haven’t done this before and I tried to read up on it, but there’s a gap in the collection. A considerable gap. I’ll have to talk to my brother about it. And by that, I mean to say that I shall never talk to my brother about it.”

Fundin laughed which eased the tension somewhat. He gestured toward the bed and said, “Want to have a lie down? I’m not really sure how to go about this either, to be honest. We don’t have to - ”

“No I want to!” Dóra exclaimed immediately. “I do want to, I very much want to, only...a lie down sounds good. To begin with.”

She hopped onto the bed and scooted back a bit on the chilled sheets until her back was against his pillows. Fundin joined her and they half reclined, side by side, not touching, until he shifted a little, to put himself more squarely atop the mattress and their shoulders brushed.

It was like a little jolt went through the pair of them, they sat up slightly straighter, but then Dóra seemed to find the blackwork on his right shoulder interesting and she raised a hand to trace it.

“That’s very beautiful,” she said, reading the joined runes in the dark with ease; she’d forgotten to take her spectacles off. “For valor.”

“Aye,” he nodded. “Got it after my first campaign. Thrór insisted, said he’d never seen a youngling so keen for a fight. I was just trying to keep my neck from the blade. It’s said I killed two-hundred goblins, I don’t remember. I wasn’t counting. I do know I saved a score of our soldiers, that’s what I’m proudest of.”

“As well you should be,” Dóra said sincerely, kissing the markings on his arm. “Valliant, that’s you to the core. Have I mentioned that I feel very honored to know you?”

“Not many do,” Fundin said; it felt like a confession and what a strange time to speak of such things, naked in bed, at a time when speech ought to have been the last thing on his mind. “Lots of folks know _of_ me, but...your friends from the scriptorium, for example. They know Fundin the Fearless which is...of course I’m proud of my craft and my service to the throne, but I think when people look at me all they see is the helm.”

“I’ll admit, that caught my eye, at first,” Dóra replied, her small, fine-boned hand resting on his brawny forearm. “But I think you’re even better beneath the armor - wait a moment, that was poorly phrased. What I mean to say is you have a good heart. And that’s just as valuable as having two strong sword arms.”

Fundin looked down at Dóra and smiled. She was staring up at him earnestly, her eyes shining behind her spectacles, pretty as a picture. Fundin knew he loved her, he felt it with every beat of his heart, but until that moment he did not realize that it was possible to feel Dóra’s love for him. It practically poured out of her, in the tone of her voice, in the the feel of her hand upon his arm, and in the light in her eyes. He kissed her, as deeply as he had ever kissed her before and he hoped that she felt his love for her just as strongly.

They shifted on the bed until he lay over her, supporting his weight on his arms and when he pulled away, he spared a few moments to admire her, lying upon his sheets. Dóra was small, of course, but a fine dwarven lass nevertheless. Her body was compact, but there was strength in her limbs that no Man could match. Her hips flared out, stout and sturdy from her trim little waist and her loose hair lay over her shoulders, half obscuring her breasts which were soft, lightly dusted with brown hair, and unexpectedly generous; they fitted very well in his hands when he ventured to touch them and Dóra gave a little encouraging nod to indicate that he was welcome to do so.

Her hands explored his body in turn, lingering over thick, hard muscles as her fingers tangled in the thick black curls that covered his chest and belly. It was rather thrilling, to have that warm, stout body held above hers, like the ceiling of a cozy, living cave. When he bent low, covering her, but not quite crushing her to apply his mouth to the hollow of her throat, the feeling of his beard against her breasts made her brown nipples, several shades darker than the surrounding skin, tighten, sending a jolt of warm pleasure between her legs.

Dóra let out a little yipping noise of anticipation, which made Fundin lift his head and ask, “What?”

To which she repeated, “What?”

“Did you say something?” Fundin asked, brow furrowing.

“No,” Dóra shook her head, confused. “Not at all.”

“Oh.” Fundin was quiet for a beat, then, looked back down at her bare body that he was not nearly done exploring. “Shall I just…?”

“Continue, aye, by all means,” Dóra nodded eagerly, so eagerly she almost headbutted him on the chin. Quick reflexes enabled Fundin to move away, but when he dipped his head back down and his unexpectedly cold nose touched her chest, she realized with dismay that her momentary pleasure seemed quite lost. Damn.

It returned when Fundin tentatively put his mouth against her skin, learning the taste of her with his lips, tongue and - _very_ cautiously - his teeth.

She could feel his hardness brush the inside of her thigh and she trembled, just a little bit, with nerves and anticipation. Two small voices in her head were at odds with one another. One, beckoned, _Go on then, have it over and get it out of the way so you won’t be so anxious next time!_ and another cried out, _No, no! Give me a bit more time, I just want a bit more time, is it too late to look in the stacks again and see if there’s something useful you overlooked? What if you’re terrible at this?_

When she caught sight of Fundin’s face again, Dóra was only a little relieved to see that he looked as nervous as she felt. At least, she thought he did; her spectacles were fogging up and made it difficult to make out much of anything.

“Erm, are you…” he began, but seemed to think whatever he was going to say was not appropriate and settled on, “How are you?”

“Fine,” she replied automatically. “Erm. I mean...how are you?”

“Fine,” Fundin said; his voice was a half-octave higher than usual, more an avalanche than a rockslide. Without his quite meaning to, his eyes slid downward at the same time as Dóra’s and she gave a little startle, which made Fundin’s eyes fly back to her face, panicking.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to!” he said, horrified that he’d done something to put her off or worse - that she decided she hadn’t like the look of him after all.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to,” she reassured him for what felt like the fiftieth time that night, petting his chest less like a lover and more like someone trying to calm a spooked pony. And she _did_ want to, she very much wanted to, her _body_ very much wanted to, if the gentle, throbbing heat in her nether regions was anything to judge such things by it was only that, having caught a glimpse of Fundin’s...endowment at full...attention she was struck by the thought that, _That can’t possibly be expected to fit, can it?_

“I’ve got, erm...just...stay right there,” Fundin said, sitting up on his haunches and digging through the drawer in his bedside table for a flask of oil. The muscles in his back practically groaned their relief; they were getting quite stiff with the effort it took to keep himself positioned over her without collapsing on top of her.

“Excellent!” Dóra clapped, honestly clapped her hands, until she realized that she looked ridiculous and stopped, twisting them over her stomach nervously. “And - ah, have you got a - ”

“That too,” Fundin reassured her. After several long moments, he produced a sheath and then, after several longer moments, put it on. There was wetness making the curls between her legs nearly black, which was promising, but easing the way could not be a bad thing, surely.

The only trouble was, finding the way. Fundin was trying to arrange himself in such a manner that he would not fall upon Halldóra entirely at an inopportune moment, but it was a little difficult, given that she was so very much shorter than him, not to do so in a way that left her staring up at his chest and he running the risk of braining himself on the headboard. Some very inelegant wiggling and sifting ensued which resulted in Dóra shaking a little beneath him.

For a horrible instant, Fundin thought she was crying.

“Dóra?” he asked in alarm. “Are you - ”

His arms almost gave out at the crashing, wonderful realization that she was _laughing._

“I’m sorry!” she squeaked, bringing a hand up over her mouth to quiet her giggles. “I’m sorry! Only you look so… _funny_ , you look so angry at yourself.”

Fundin chortled and bumped his brow against hers. “I thought you’d begun weeping on me!” he declared.

Dóra let out a great big snort of laughter and tilted her chin up to give him a kiss. “No, no! Only I was being quiet because I didn’t want to put you off!”

With deep bellows of laughter, Fundin fell onto the bed beside Dóra, taking her in his arms and kissing her face all over while she shook with gales of mirth.  
“Oh, we’re rubbish!” he lamented, in hysterics.

“We’re ridiculous!” Dóra agreed, brushing his hair out of his face and tucking it behind his ears. True to his fears in the bath, Fundin was sweating like a thoroughbred on racing day, but Dóra didn’t seem to be offended.

“We’re hopeless,” he shook his head, but Dóra sat up a little, with a determined set to her chin.

“Now, now,” she said, patting his chest again. “Not quite that. I think this is simply a question of angles. Pity neither of us is a masterbuilder. No matter, no matter, let’s see. I think...you lie there. And I’ll just...aye, that’ll do it. Keep still a moment…”

Placing herself atop him seemed to do the trick and they proceeded very, very slowly. Dóra did request at first that he _please_ make every effort to keep still until she bade him move and, no, it didn’t _hurt_ , but it was a very different sort of feeling than she was accustomed to, would he mind applying his hands to her for just a bit - a little lower. A little more to the right. Lower - not that low - ah. _There._

It was not, in short, a night that would be immortalized in song. But in the end, both Fundin and Halldóra were in one another’s arms, smiling and occasionally giving in to bursts of giggles which set the other laughing without a word being spoken between them.

“Shall I stay until morning?” Dóra whispered, her head against Fundin’s shoulder. She did not know why she was whispering, they were alone in the house, but it seemed the thing to do.

“I’d like that, if you want to,” Fundin replied, almost as quietly, kissing her temple. “Shall I take your spectacles?”

“Please,” Dóra said, taking them off and handing them to him. “I never intended to wear them!”

“They suit you,” Fundin said, kissing her brow, then each of her closed eyelids, gently. The weight of her in his arms as he drifted off probably ought to feel strange. He’d never had someone stay the night in his bed and making camp was nothing like this. Then he was sleeping upon the ground, beside a dozen snoring comrades. It was much more to his liking, he discovered, to have only one little companion, tucked up snugly against him, smelling of clean sweat and vanilla.

Dóra smiled against Fundin’s skin and kissed the inkwork on his shoulder. She was so warm and cozy, the residual discomfort troubled her far less than she feared it might. Perhaps this was why she had not been able to find a suitable instructional volume; there was nothing anyone could say that would not make a first romantic encounter utterly without a little discomfort, a little uncertainty and embarrassment. But she didn’t mind, not really. Not with Fundin.

Before she drifted off entirely, Dóra leaned up to whisper one last great secret into his ear.

Fundin’s breathing hitched beneath her. He was, evidently, stunned by the intimacy of what she just shared. Then he laughed.

“Of course it is!” he exclaimed sleepily, dreamily and then, still chuckling, whispered his own great secret into her ear.

“Of _course_ it is,” Halldóra smiled and tugged his beard to make him lower his mouth for one more kiss goodnight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Awkward. Gah. BUT! Just to cover my butt for copyright reasons, the song Dóra sings is "Weep You No More Sad Fountains" which was an anonymously published poem, put to music by Patrick Doyle. Oh! OH! And there's art! There's honest-to-goodness art of Dóra on the internet by **feignedsobriquet** and it is GORGEOUS - take a look: http://feignedsobriquet.tumblr.com/post/74267793622


	19. The Wedding, Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This next chapter is a time-skip ahead two years, I've decided to expand this story beyond courtship, but I promise there will still be romance and comedy in store for this duo and maybe a touch of angst.

The hills and valleys surrounding the Lonely Mountain thawed with the springtime. Shy crocuses tentatively poked their green buds out through patches of dirty snow and mud that lined the roadways while River Running cut its path through rock at full depth and swell thanks to the mountain runoff. The world outside of Erebor was slowly waking to warmer days and shorter nights, but inside the rock itself, life went on as busily as ever it had.

It was busier in some quarters than others. New suits and robes and tunics woven of silks and brocades, encrusted with jewels were being commissioned, the wine cellars inventoried and the last of the winter rations counted and re-counted for there was a royal wedding afoot and preparations needed to be made to furnish the feast.

To the amazement of all, Thrór, King Under the Mountain who all expected to be chief celebrant, gave the commissions for food, drink, and decorations with a glum aspect and a head oft shaken with badly concealed disappointment. He’d been moping about with a hangdog expression for weeks, ever since Fundin and Halldóra mentioned their desire to be married in springtime. 

No one was more surprised than they when, rather than leaping up from his seat and embracing them, Thror let his dinner knife fall to the table with a clatter and announced, “You can’t.”

The faces of the happy couple fell as one and his wife hit him hard up the back of his head. “You’ve got to be joking,” she thundered, agog. “For two years you’ve been all atwitter and now you’re saying they can’t wed?”

“Not in spring!” Thrór announced, shaking his head. “No, no, wait ‘til autumn, once the caravans have come for trading you’ll be able to have a proper wedding.”

“A proper wedding?” Gróin poked his head into the conversation from further down the table, his mouth a thin line behind his greying beard. “What, are all the law clerks and temple attendants on holiday until Durin’s Day? Though, far be it from me to _agree_ with my liege-lord, I don’t see what the rush is, you haven’t been engaged above six months.”

“Paperwork’s nearly done,” Fundin pointed out, jabbing his supper with his knife a few times, as if making sure the beast was well and truly slain. “Why wait?”

“The condition of the roads is something to take into account,” Maeva pointed out, though she sounded altogether less peevish than her husband. “This isn’t Khazad-dûm - would that it were! - where you can get from one range to another without chancing the weather aboveground. The route from the Iron Hills isn’t likely to be passable for some months yet, with the rainy season upon them.”

“May I be excused?” Thráin asked, rapping the heel of his boot against his chair impatiently. 

“You haven’t finished your supper,” Sigdís shook her head and pushed his chair a little closer to the table. “Tuck in.”

“Talk of weddings puts me off my food,” he muttered, poking his meat in a forlorn kind of way.

“You don’t want to be cupbearer, then?” Dóra winked at him.

The young dwarf looked up from his supper, mortification all over his face. “Don’t even _joke_ about that sort of thing,” he said, turning pale at the very thought. “I’d run down to the mines and you wouldn’t find me for weeks. Don’t think I wouldn’t, you’d have to put the wedding off to come looking for me.”

“I’m not so certain we’d bother,” Thrór frowned at his son, disappointed. “If Fundin and Dóra wanted you for a cupbearer, I hope you’d do your duty by them.”

“I’d ruin the wedding,” Thráin declared resolutely, going positively pale under the dark scruff that adorned his cheeks. “I’d spill the wine or trip or do some other thing - _please_ don’t ask me.”

“Not to worry,” Dóra leaned across the table and patted his hand consolingly. “One of the apprentices in the library has already staked her claim - if I chose another over her, she’d cut my beard off and never forgive me for overlooking her.”

Thrór still looked less than pleased. “It ought to be family - ” he began, but his wife rolled her eyes at him.

“I’ve never known you to be so stuffy,” she pointed out. “If the lad won’t do it and some lass is keen, why not? ‘Less _you_ want to be the one given the task, but as I understand it the cupbearer’s meant to be a rosy-cheeked youngling.”

“Are you saying my cheeks aren’t rosy?” Thrór asked, sounding positively scandalized. Then he laughed and Thráin let out the breath he’d been holding since his father tried to argue the point. 

Thrór could never be faulted for a lack of enthusiasm where a celebration was concerned, but he did have a tendency to attempt to sweep his much more subdued son along in his joy, like debris caught in the bristles of a broom. It wasn’t that Thrór was unaware of his son’s reticence, he simply thought the lad would enjoy himself more if he put his best foot forward and _tried_ to be a bit more enthused when times called for it. 

“Alright, Thráin will have to play the part of contented onlooker - no, you must, there’s one duty you can’t wriggle out of,” Thrór insisted before Thráin could summon his voice to protest that he did not have to attend the wedding, in addition to not taking a part in the ceremony. “Which means it’s to the tailor with you.”

If there was any doubt that Thráin would not finish his supper, it vanished at once. With a low groan, he dropped his head to the tabletop and left it there as his mother patted his back in a very feeble show of sympathy. 

“Needs must,” she shrugged. “And you’ll have to have your hair dressed.”

With a moan that was even more pitiful than the first he slid out of his seat entirely and sat upon the floor with his head in his hands, hidden from view. 

“I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this,” he whinged from beneath the table. “I ought never have introduced you, I knew there’d be a price to pay.”

“Nonsense,” Thrór cut the remainder of his son’s supper and half and slid it onto his own plate, leaving the rest for his wife. “If you hadn’t done it first, I would have, ere long. ‘Writ in stars and carved in stone,’ that’s what I say.”

“You ought to have been a poet, not a king,” Dóra remarked wryly.

“Or an actor,” Thrór smiled at her, “for that’s a borrowed phrase. But come now, relent a little. Wait ‘til summer, at the very least. As Maeva said, when the roadways clear. You’ll have a mother coming from the Iron Hills, wait until the western road’s dried up.”

Dóra nodded at this counsel but said nothing, putting her eyes back on her dinner and taking a bite so she wouldn’t have to reply right away. Honestly, there was no guarantee that Dómarra would agree that there was a _need_ ; attendance at her daughter’s wedding probably fell into the category of ‘courtesy’ for her and not necessity. 

Thrór then tried appealing to Fundin on the subject of timing; the Mountain had drunk, over the course of the winter, nearly all their stores of Southern liquors and wouldn’t his companions-at-arms be merrier if they waited until those quantities could be restored?

“Mead’s traditional, isn’t it?” Fundin asked, looking at Dóra for help, but she was absorbed in buttering a roll. “We’ve got plenty of that.”

“And whiskey punch will do in a pinch, if we’ve sugar to make it sweet,” Maeva added. Of all the dwarves at table, she was the only one who noticed when Dóra’s previously cheerful countenance drooped at the mention of her mother. “And cloves. We’ve got water we can heat.”

“You don’t need the cloves,” Gróin said dismissively.

“You don’t really need the hot water either,” Dísa smirked.

“You could take the merriment out of of Durin’s Day,” Thrór huffed. “Doubtless you’d be satisfied with a toast at supper following a ceremony in one of the temple’s storage cupboards.”

Both Fundin and Halldóra nodded their heads and spoke as one, “That’d be fine.”

Thrór, looking the very picture of his sullen son, dropped his head into his hands and said, “Sometimes I don’t know what’s to be done with you.”

So morose had he been the week following that Fundin visited Halldóra in the library to discuss the matter. The yearly influx of scholars who came during the winter months was waning, with the academic conferences wrapping up, and it was a quieter place by far than was customary during the coldest days of the year. Fundin found her beside a cart overflowing with books, muttering to herself. 

“Time after time we say, ‘Oh, pray, don’t worry about reshelving the books, that’s our task!’ I think I must be too pleasant about it, it’s not a courtesy…oh! Oh, of _course_ , a book about the proper construction of an athanor belongs smack in the middle of Hjalmdís Hjalmul’s _Histories!_ Just the place for it, it’s a wonder we hadn’t thought of that ourselves,” she continued in this vein until a shadow fell over her, interrupting her reading as she looked up to see who it was.

Immediately the furrows in her brow lightened and she smiled, “Oh! What a pleasant surprise...you haven’t been standing there very long, have you?”

“Long enough to decide you need a break,” Fundin said, offering his hand to pull Dóra too her feet. She took it, but spared a longing look back at her cart.

“When I come back, someone will have shelved them all in the wrong order again, thinking they were being useful,” she sighed. “Someone needs to create a better system for this library’s operation than memory and my brother’s whims.”

“Careful, I hear he comes when summoned,” Fundin whispered, making Dóra giggle, the sound muffled by parchment, vellum, and velvet. They found a cozy corner to settle in, surrounded by shelves on all sides. Fundin settled in on the floor and Dóra took a seat in his lap and let him warm up her hands with his, they were always too cold for his liking. “I was thinking…do you think we ought to put the...wedding off ‘til the autumn? To appease Thrór.”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Dóra admitted. “He seems so disappointed! But, well, we’ll be married in law long before then and to delay the ceremony to increase its grandeur seems...er...selfish? Self-aggrandizing? One of those. We’re not the prince and princess of the realm, after all.”

“Aye, true enough, but then I don’t think Thráin’s going to be a marrying sort,” Fundin predicted.

Dóra elbowed him in the ribs, “You don’t know that! He might very well find someone to fall in love with...I’m sure he’d never admit it, but he might find someone, he’s still awfully young.”

Fundin tried to picture his sour-faced little nephew dressed up for his wedding day, all aglow to be tying the knot with some dwarf or other who suited him, but he came up utterly short. In fact, when he tried to conjure the image, the only thing that came to mind was Thráin pulling a very dour face and asking in his most annoyed tone why his uncle would _ever_ try to imagine him in such a ludicrous situation. Even the Thráin of his imagination was bad-tempered. 

“Even so,” Fundin shrugged. “I feel like we’re cheating him of a treat.”

“Well, I still don’t know that it’s better to wait all those months,” Dóra replied slowly. “But...if he has any suggestions, they could surely be taken under consideration. He is King Under the Mountain. And he does know more about throwing a proper fete than I do.”

“And me,” Fundin agreed. “Late spring, then? When the rains have mostly stopped?”

“Aye, that sounds much more reasonable,” Dóra said, letting her head fall back against his shoulder as she closed her eyes. “Though I don’t think there’s going to be nearly as much foot travel as Thrór believes.”

“You don’t think your amad will come?” Fundin asked. If there was a bit of hope in his voice, he hoped Dóra would forgive him for it.

But all thoughts of forgiveness fled his mind when Dóra’s expression turned guilty. “She won’t come if she doesn’t know there’s something to come _to.”_

“You haven’t _told_ her?” he asked, astonished. Fundin knew there were difficulties between mother and daughter - he bore Dómarra absolutely no affection whatever, despite the fact that they’d never met - but he it hadn’t occurred to him that Dóra would not write and mention their engagement. “Or did Haldr destroy all your letters?”

It was within the realm of possibility, but Dóra shook her head. “It’s my fault she doesn’t know, I’ve been delinquent in relating all the particulars of my comings and goings and doings, but then she never _wants_ to read all the particulars, so I think I can be forgiven for - ”

“I don’t know that getting married is a ‘particular,’” Fundin interrupted, sounding just the _teeniest_ bit peeved to have been placed on the same level as what Halldóra ate at breakfast or which combs she chose to dress her hair of a morning. 

Dóra looked up, a small smile playing around her mouth. “Are you pouting at me?”

“Just a bit,” Fundin confirmed and lowered his head when she lifted herself up a bit to kiss him.

“You’re not a particular,” she reassured him, taking his left hand and holding it in both of hers. “I just don’t know how to put it. Which is a feeble excuse, given that my livelihood consists of knowing how to set things down in writing, but there you are.”

“I’ll write it for you,” Fundin suggested. With a quick smile he cleared his throat and said, “To the Lady Dómarra, I am Fundin Farinul and I will be marrying your daughter in approximately three months’ time. I hope the roads are in such a state that you can travel to Erebor with minimal difficulty, but if you cannot, very few would mark your absence - ”

“Fundin! You can’t say that!” Dóra exclaimed, though her husband-to-be’s words were one of the reasons she had been so long about relating the particulars of her engagement to her mother. She could not imagine writing a letter inviting her to the wedding without including the postscript ‘Please don’t come,’ without sounding like the worst sort of daughter who had ever lived.

The deeper fear was the very real possibility that if she wrote to her mother, inviting her to attend, she would decline the invitation entirely. It was a peculiar thing, to hope for a certain outcome, knowing that she would be devastated if it came to pass, but Halldóra’s relationship with her mother was full of these little inconsistencies. 

Some of her anxiety must have shown on her face, for Fundin wrapped her in his arms and said, “When you tell her, you’ll tell her. It's only two weeks’ travel from here to the Iron Hills, you’ll do your duty by her even if you leave it ‘til the last possible moment.”

“I’ll write to her tonight,” Dóra said, more to herself than to Fundin. “You can tell Thrór to do as he chooses, we’ll put off the marriage until the first of the spring traders come North - the merchants from the Orocarni are always early along the roads, the weather being finer there. That ought to satisfy him, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure it will,” Fundin nodded. The two of them rose to their feet and Fundin parted to offer Thrór the compromise. Dóra remained hidden in the stacks a few minutes longer, breathing deeply to steel herself for her task. She took the time to replace the misshelved books in their proper place, then took herself off to a quiet corner with a small stack of writing paper to write to her mother.

**Dear Ama,**

**I confess I’ve been -**

_No,_ Dóra thought, setting aside the paper with a frown. _‘Confess’ makes it sound as if I wronged her._

**Dear Ama,  
I know you prefer I keep frivolity to a minimum, but there is something that I believe I ought to apprise you of -**

_No._ Another sheet fell by the wayside. _Too caustic._

Sheet by sheet met the same fate and, in the end, her missive turned into a very brief note.

**Dear Ama - Very busy in the library at present, little time to write. Scholars are leaving as the roads permit, we’re tidying in their absence. I hope you’re well. I’m to be married in the springtime. Warmest Regards, Halldóra**


	20. Chapter Two

Any day. Dóra sent her mother the letter a month ago and received her reply three days later; the poor raven who delivered the missive looked about ready to collapse. The reply was hardly any longer than her original note and Dóra had no idea whether she ought to be relieved or not.

 **Halldóra** (Not ‘Dear Halldóra,’ which boded ill.)

 **I always applaud diligence, but given your penchant for including digressions, it is a wonder that this information slipped your mind.** (She was unhappy, it was clear, but the tone was less outwardly angry than it might have been.)

 **Expect to see me when the roads are capable of supporting safe, swift travel. Instruct one of the servants to prepare a room. I do not trust your brother to see it done himself.** (Did that imply that she did trust Dóra? If only to see that the master bedroom was aired out?)

 **Your Amad** (No ‘affectionate,’ but then, it was a short note.)

There had been no follow-up correspondence, beyond notice given to Thrór that a party of dwarves from the Iron Hills would be arriving in Erebor within the month and required accommodations. Dómarra’s name was given among the travelers. No further messages accompanied the letter.

 _“Told her, eh?”_ Fundin asked her. The smile Dóra gave him must have betrayed something of her apprehension for he put an arm around her shoulder and bent to kiss her forehead. _“She can’t be all that cross if she’s coming all the way here - months before, even!”_

The second smile looked a little less horrified than the first, she hoped. Fundin’s words bolstered her; he seemed determined to be optimistic about the whole thing and it was catching. There was a great deal to be happy about. She was getting _married._ The act in itself did not fill her with any particular joy, marriage never had ensnared her mind as an end goal for her life. Not like some dwarves who knew that their fulfillment would come from finding a partner and raising children. When she was much younger she did not fantasize about a wedding day or the prospect of love. It seemed too remote and she was too busy.

Halldóra never glamorized or daydreamed about marriage in and of itself, but marriage to Fundin? Well, that was quite a different thing.

She hardly spared a thought for the wedding, that was utterly in Thrór’s capable hands. What she found herself thinking about as she shelved and stalked the carrels for hidden books, was the marriage. Living with Fundin - really living with him, not merely acting as a guest in his rooms, a pile of emergency tunics stashed in a drawer for when she needed to make it look as if she’d slept in her own bed, or at least returned to her own rooms before she began her day. Seeing him even more often than she did, joining their lives together.

Their nights together would be leisurely, not faintly tinged with the intrusive thoughts, _What’s the time?_ or _Will I wake Haldr if I go back now?_ or _Don’t fall asleep, you need to leave!_

There wouldn’t be anyplace else to go. His home would be her home in law, in fact, and the idea of falling asleep beside him (or, more often, on top of him) every night (barring those when she was working late or he had the night watch), slowed her execution of her duties and she spent the last hour of her time in the library dreamily replacing books with a smile on her face.

The sound of high-pitched nonsense being babbled, followed by a great deal of exasperated shushing got Dóra attention when she had finished her duties and broadened her smile; it seemed her favorite patron had come to the library.

Glóa was attempting to wrangle five hefty leather-bound volumes and several scrolls while trying not to let her two-year-old son Glói fall on his head. Dóra jogged right up to her, arms outstretched.

“Books or babe?” she asked and found herself with an armful of wriggly infant.

“Babe,” Glóa said with a satisfied sigh once she placed the books safely on the table. She began to unroll the scrolls, weighting them at either end. “They’re a good deal more delicate that _that_ little monster. Gildi was such a quiet little fellow, wouldn’t say boo to a blackbird. Would that his brother was as well-behaved.”

“Oh, what’s that?” she asked, bouncing Glói in her arms. “Are you giving your Ama trouble? I can’t believe it!”

They had never been bosom friends, but Glóa’s chilly attitude toward Halldóra softened immensely once she’d begun bringing her younger son to the library when she needed to study. With a cradle tucked beneath the writing desk, she would bounce him or rock him, he’d fuss and make quite a lot of noise, to the annoyance of both surrounding scholars and his mother. One day, when Halldóra was on her way out of the library, she passed the frazzled-looking dwarrowdam and asked if she’d like a hand.

 _“I’d like two and a pair of legs,”_ Glóa grumbled. _“He’s not happy unless he’s being taken somewhere; I’m half-afraid he’ll eschew scholarship for working as a merchant when the time comes to apprentice.”_

 _“I could take him for a bit, go on a walk, if he wouldn’t mind passing time with a stranger,”_ she offered.

 _“Oh, I couldn’t,”_ Glóa picked her son up and swayed a bit; the noise quieted, but didn’t stop. _“Not when you’re on your way out.”_

 _“I’ve nowhere to be,”_ Dóra reassured her, holding her arms out. _“Really.”_

It was a mark of how frustrated she was, and how dedicated to her craft, that Glóa handed the baby over to Halldóra. It was a surprising conversation on her end, she assumed that their head librarian’s sister was coming over to ask her to gag him, as Haldr had done earlier in the week. Alright, to be fair, Haldr hadn’t asked her to gag him specifically. He said he had a bottle of whiskey in his office and he was sure a nip or two would send the little fellow off into silent slumber, but it amounted to the same thing.

Glóa agreed to take a dram of whiskey, but she was the one who drank it down, rocking Glói in one arm and taking notes with her free hand. It was an experience that she did not relish repeating. She assumed that the lad wouldn’t quiet down for Halldóra and she, overwhelmed, would be back in ten minutes with an apology on her lips and retreat in her steps.

She lifted the little fellow up and lay him against her shoulder, then bid Glóa good luck with her work and wandered off among the stacks.

Fifteen minutes later and she hadn’t come back, Glóa was relieved. Thirty minutes later she found she was actually being tremendously productive. An hour later she started to become concerned that some precariously stacked pile of books had toppled over, burying Glói and Halldóra beneath them, never to be found.

An hour and a half later when she became so nervous that she went looking for them, she found that her fears were utterly unbiased. Halldóra was sitting in a nearby armchair, a book laid out on a table beside her and Glói fast asleep, sucking on his fist.

From that day on Glóa told anyone who would listen that Halldóra was the kindest, sweetest girl she had ever known, a credit to her craft and their race as a whole.

And she may or may not have organized her study hours to begin when Dóra’s shifts in the library were ending. But if asked she would never admit it and instead ascribe the timing of her visits to coincidence.

“He’s going to miss his favorite minder,” Glóa commented as her son reached up and pulled out of Dóra’s braids out of her clasps.

“Because the winter’s ended?” Dóra asked. Court would be meeting regularly very soon, between her duties to the King and her regular work in the scriptorium, the amount of time she spent in the library would be severely curtailed. “I’ll stop by, Haldr usually knows where to find me.”

“Well, there’s that,” Glóa nodded, arranging her pens and inks just so. “But more to the point - ah, have I congratulated you yet? I don’t remember, if not, congratulations.”

“On what?” Dóra asked blankly, trying to remember if she had achieved any honor of note recently and coming up short.

“You’ve been working too hard,” Glóa declared. “On the _wedding_ , of course.”

“Oh!” Dóra exclaimed, dodging her head out of the way since Glói tired of playing with her hair and was reaching for her spectacles. “Thank you! Thrór’s very excited.”

Glóa laughed and nodded, “Aye, I’m sure he is, it’ll be a celebration for the Ages, I’m sure. What are you wearing? Unless you want it to be a surprise.”

That was a very good question and Dóra’s face went blank as she realized that she hadn’t given any thought to what she was going to wear. At all. Abstractly she’d known that she was going to dress for her wedding, obviously, it wasn’t the done thing to go naked, but somehow it never actually occurred to her that she probably ought to take herself to the seamstress or a tailor and have something made.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “So I suppose it’s a surprise!”

“Well, don’t do what I did,” Glóa leaned forward in a confidential manner, glancing around to be sure there weren’t passers-by who might hear. “My mother - bless her hands, but she’s a sentimentalist. She wanted me to wear her wedding robes. Pale blue, which made me look sallow in the torchlight and I’m half a head taller than her. I’m fairly certain the mercer who sold her the cloth had _died_ and letting out the hem didn’t solve anything. They wound up trimming it with about three inches of silver lace and it looked alright, but if I could go back and do it all again, I’d have worn my own clothes.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Dóra said, shifting Glói to her other hip since he was getting a trifle impatient with their talking. “Alright, alright, let’s make the rounds, you. Say good-bye to Ama.”

Glói did nothing of the sort. He turned away from his mother and pointed toward the main desk, apparently eager to be cooed over - and snuck sweets from Gílla who could never resist a toothless smile.

“Maybe he’ll be a captain of the Guard,” Dóra winked at Glóa. “He does like to command.”

“He’s a brat,” Glóa sighed fondly. “Off you go, then.”

Off they went. No matter how many times Glói went visiting around the library, he always received a warm welcome. Even the fussiest, grumpiest dwarflings could expect an eager reception and a good deal of cooing over how sweet and handsome and clever they were. The wrigglier and more rambunctious the child, it seemed, the more universally it was loved. Glói was no exception and he lit up like a bonfire on Durin’s Day when all the desk staff dropped their tasks and came over to talk to him and pick him up and tickle him.

“I ought to have another one,” Gílla sighed, kissing his flyaway brown hair. “Try for a girl this time.”

“You should,” Dóra agreed eagerly. “Before Glói gets tired of us...can I ask you a question?”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Gílla replied, handing Glói a spare scrap of rag paper to crumple and tear if he so desired. “I daresay you know the collection better than I do.”

“There might be a volume on it...but I’ll just ask.” Dóra licked her lips nervously and drew closer to Gílla keeping her voice down. “What does one wear when one is getting married?”

“Clothes,” Gílla replied promptly. “That was an easy one.”

“No, _really,”_ Dóra said with a touch of urgency. “Because...well, I haven’t been to a wedding in ages and I don’t really...it’s not a topic that comes up often, is it?”

“Depends,” Gílla shrugged. “Of my friends who want to get married, it’s a deep vein for conversation, they can delve it for hours. I didn’t want a lot of fuss - wait. You haven’t chosen a gown yet?”

“No,” Dóra admitted, shuffling her feet like a child who admitted not having completed their work in a timely manner. “I forgot.”

“Dóra!” she exclaimed, her tone shocked. “You’re to be married in _three months!_ I commissioned my robes a solid _year_ before I was wed - the veil _two years_ before!”

“You didn’t!” Dóra squeaked. No. A year? It absolutely could not be. When she wanted a new coat cut, even a fine one, it never took more than a month to be made and delivered.

“I did,” Gílla insisted, making an effort to lower her voice because they were beginning to get angry looks from the surrounding scribes. “Unless you were planning on wearing your mother’s things, but they’d still have to be altered. Taken in? Let out? I haven’t seen your mother in years, I’ve half forgotten what she looks like.”

“I don’t know - that is, I know what she looks like,” Dóra clarified, picking Glói back up since he finished his chocolate and was tired of sitting on the desk. “I don’t know if she even has the things she wore for her wedding or if she’d let me wear them - want me to, that is. Alright, alright, dearie, let’s have a walk.”

“This conversation is far from over,” Gílla said warningly as Dóra waved goodbye and walked off with Glói. “The _second_ your mother gets here, you’d better ask. Or prepare to pay an arm and a leg for quick work.”

Dóra nodded, only half hearing her. Did dwarrowdams usually wear their mothers’ old things? Glóa had, Gílla seemed to find it a usual practice. What had her mother looked like on her wedding day, anyway?

Her parents’ portrait, commissioned after their wedding, had been removed from its place in the study after her father died. There one day, gone the next. Dóra had been quite young at the time and though she had a good memory, she could hardly remember what it looked like. Had her mother worn gold? Blue? Green? And what had her father worn? Red, she thought, but that might have been fancy. When she thought of her father he was always wearing red.

If her mother did still have the clothes she’d worn, they would have to be taken in. Dómarra was a far more robust specimen than her daughter. Taller, broader in the shoulders. No one in their family was particularly tall, but Dóra was by far the smallest of the lot.

Maybe it wouldn’t take all that long to commission a new coat, she mused, walking Glói over to one of the stained glass windows. There wasn’t a need for much material, after all, and too much decoration made her look like a gaudy little lampstand.

“What do you think I should wear, Glói?” she asked, holding the little fellow around the back so that he was balanced against her stomach. He reached up and pulled on her nose. She pretended to sneeze and made him laugh. “A ring? Of course, what a good idea. Anything else?”

But Glói was distracted by the colored light streaming in through the window and wiggled to be put down. He sat on his bottom on the carpet and lifted his arms, as if trying to catch the beams.

Dóra sat down beside him on the floor, tracing patterns in the carpet with her fingertip. “What colors, do you think?”

Glói looked down and slammed his hands down all around him.

“Blue?” she asked, marking where his little fingers fell. “And red? And purple? And yellow? My, my, that’s adventurous. You’re very good at this.”

Glói flashed a gummy smile at her, a little drool coming out of the side of his mouth, which Dóra wiped away with the corner of her sleeve. The sound of running boots on carpet was all the warning she had before she was seized around the shoulders and embraced in a stranglehold of love.

“THANK YOU!” Elísif said, kissing her cheek loudly. “I know I’ve thanked you already, but my Adadith said I should thank you again for letting me be your cupbearer, because it ought to have been Thráin - I _told_ him he didn’t want to do it and would have ruined the wedding, but he said I should thank you anyway. He thinks I was second choice, but I’ve told him I was first all along and Thráin knows it and isn’t bothered by it.”

“Thráin should be thanking you,” Dóra said, tugging the dwarfling’s arms away gently so she could breathe. “When his father mentioned it, he almost fainted! You quite saved him with your offer.”

“I’m a heroine,” Elís puffed up her chest proudly and squealed when she saw Glói, attention momentarily diverted. “Ooh, hallo! Wait, I’ll be right back!”

She was gone as quickly as she’d come, darting in and out of the stacks until she returned with a small inking ball.

“That’s clean?” Dóra asked when she sat down and made to hand it to the baby.

“Aye,” Elís confirmed. “It’s brand new, I...borrowed it. I’ll put it back, though! When he goes back to his Ama. Go on, Glói, see if you can knock it over.”

The two dwarflings amused themselves together, Glói pushing the handle until the little ball of leather and wood fell on its side. Elís righted it again, showering him with praise every time he toppled it.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, turning back to Dóra abruptly. “Adad wanted me to ask you something else - what colors are you wearing? So I don’t look silly next to you. I get a new tunic! _And_ a new coat! He wanted to know so he could pick the materials, but he said you could pick if you wanted, only you’re always busy, so if you just told him, he could do it herself. And he thought you probably were wearing gold, but I said I didn’t know and hadn’t asked so he wanted me to ask that, just in case you went with silver - you’re not wearing bronze are you? I don’t like bronze.”

That nauseating, heart-pounding feeling of dread that Dóra felt when she realized she’d forgotten an important task was making Dóra feel faint. This wasn’t a matter of being absent-minded, this was a task she hadn’t even known she had to perform.

“Er...I’ll let your adad know,” Dóra replied slowly, “by week’s end.”

“Alright,” Elís replied agreeably. “Are you very excited?”

“Oh, aye,” she swallowed, and nodded vaguely. Mother coming and clothes to buy and...gold jewelry? Silver? And which jewels? Should she wear her spectacles? She wanted to _see_ didn’t she? Did folk wear spectacles when they got married? Had either of her parents worn theirs on their wedding day?

Again, she tried to remember the portrait, she must have stared at it hundreds of times when she was little - nay, thousands, for all the hours she spent in the study. But try as she might, she couldn’t conjure a clear image. Her father in red. Her mother scowling - but why should she have been scowling when she was getting married?

A cold trickle of realization made Dóra shiver a bit. Her father hadn’t been married in red, at least, she did not think he had been. But he had been buried in it. And if her mother had been smiling in her portrait, it was an expression that rarely graced her face after he died.

Dóra resolved, when her mother arrived, not to ask her about the gown she’d worn to the wedding. Much like the portrait, she had no idea where it was and she was sure that her mother would not tell if she asked.

* * *

 

There was nothing Fundin hated more than going to the tailor’s. It was a constant occupation of his childhood, no sooner had he received a new coat or a pair of trousers than it was back to the shops again to order more because he outgrew them a month after. Standing still for measurements and pining was akin to torture for him, though as he was grown, he knew he could not get away with wriggling and whinging as was his wont in his younger years.

Thráin, not laboring under the yoke of adulthood and burdened by maturity, did his complaining for him.

“I don’t like this collar,” he complained, pulling at the neck of the coat that was being fitted on him.

“Too tight?” the 'dam working on the length of the hem asked, through a mouthful of pins.

“Too stiff,” he pulled again and Fundin heard a thread snap.

The dwarrowdam snapped to her feet immediately and batted his hands away from his neck. Thrór left her with strict instructions to be as rough as was needed to keep his son in line, given that his uncle was under strict command not to move until his fitting was over.

“See what you’ve done?” she reprimanded him mildly. “Now I’ve got to resew this.”

“Resew it to his skin,” Thrór called from an adjoining room. “Don’t make me come in there, lad!”

Thráin huffed out a breath and did his best impression of a sack of grain, slouching on the stool he was forced to stand on while the seamstress flitted around him with a measuring tape, prodding him in the back and belly when she wanted him to stand up straight.

When asked what he wanted to wear to the wedding, he scowled and muttered, “Nothing. I don’t want to go.”

His mother struck him on the back of the head and told him to give a real answer.

“Black,” he said, finally and they decided to take what they could. Black it was, for their dourest of lambs.

“Baa-baa, black sheep, have you any wool?” Óin teased as he ascended his own stool beside Thráin, looking far better turned out in dark green.

“Shut up,” Thráin retorted.

 _“Both_ of you shut up,” Fundin interjected. “Or I’ll box your ears.”

“Empty threat,” Thráin said immediately, eyeing his uncle out of the corners of his eye. “Your arms are stuck.”

True, lunging at the boy would definitely dislodge about fifty pins and probably result in tearing some very expensive embroidered velvet, but it might be worth it. But then Thrór would probably box _his_ ears and they were making quite a spectacle of themselves already.

“Stop being so sour,” Óin said to Thráin. Then, with an evil little grin added, “Anyone’d think you were _jealous_ that Uncle Fundin’s marrying Dóra instead of you.”

Thráin looked so totally horrified by his cousin’s accusation that Fundin found himself praying silently that he please not vomit on the seamstress’s head.

“Ugh,” he gagged audibly and swallowed. “You’re vile. I don’t want to _marry_ her. I don’t think anyone should get married. When I’m king, I’m declaring no more marriages anymore for anyone ever. If you’re already married you can stay that way, but _no more._ They’re the worst bother.”

“Marriages or weddings?” Fundin asked Thráin. “The marriage won’t be a bother to you - ”

“Not unless you’re _jealous,”_ Óin prodded in a sing-song voice that went right through Fundin’s head.

 _“Óin,”_ he growled warningly. “One more word and I _swear -_ Thráin, it’ll be one night out of your life. Once we’re married you won’t even have to visit us.”

Fundin was trying to salvage what had to be a very troublesome appointment for the tailor and his employees. Trying to calm down his irate nephew and cut the teasing one off before he caused a minor catastrophe. He thought he was doing the right thing, going about it the right way. Trying to make it clear that his marriage had nothing to do with Thráin in the slightest. He was trying to make things better.

Apparently, he just made it all ten times worse. Thráin’s face contorted in miserable anger and he hopped off his stool, throwing the half-pinned coat off, scattering the pins and tearing the seams. He grabbed his old coat from where it had been neatly hung up by the apprentices and ran out of the shop as fast as his legs could carry him.

Óin and Fundin stared after him. Dimly, Fundin was aware of the seamstress, kneeling on the floor with the twisted remains of Thráin’s coat. She was counting backwards from ten. When she got down to ‘two’ she started again. This time at twenty.

“Look what you did!” Óin scolded Fundin, then stood straight and tall as one of the tailors came forward to cast a critical eye over the buttons on his doublet.

“What _I_ did?” Fundin replied, goggling at him. “What I did? _You_ were the one goading him! Poking and prodding, you know what he’s like!”

Thrór emerged, dressed in his usual clothes, counting out coins from his purse - it seemed the shop owner would be receiving a sizeable tip for the day’s work. That done, he left the shop without another word, storming off in pursuit of his son.

Fundin practically leapt off the stool once he was given leave to go. He had no idea what he’d said to set Thráin off, but it could not be denied that his were the words that sent him running. Was he really _that_ down on the idea of his uncle and his tutor getting married? He made no secret that he found the idea of romance as absurd as his mother did, but his ire usually took the form of muttered ravings about how stupid they all were or restlessness at the dinner table. Not running off into the Mountain like he was being chased.

He wasn’t in the Guard’s quarters, nor was he in his room - he met Thrór coming out of the royal suite just as he was about to go in. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the lad, he told Fundin before walking off, a worried look on his face. “Good thing his mother’s a hunter!” he called over his shoulder before Fundin was out of earshot.

He didn’t quite have his sister’s keen eyes, but he definitely had her stamina and he searched the Mountain high, (the observatories where no one said they’d seen the prince), middle, (the throne room, deserted as usual when court was not meeting), and low, (the libraries, on the off chance he tried to find Dóra to beg her to call the whole thing off).

He found Dóra, or at least the back of her, sitting on the floor in a pool of colored light. “Have you seen - ?” he started, but shut his mouth when she brought her finger to her lips to bid him be quiet.

As Fundin got closer, he saw that there was a baby curled up in her lap, sleeping, an enormous atlas spread out on the floor in front of him.

“I don’t think he’s destined for cartography,” she whispered when Fundin crouched down beside her. “Put him right to sleep; I thought he might like the pictures.”

Fundin smiled briefly; this was the famous Glói she’d taken a shine to. For all her duties, she added ‘child-minding’ to the list, to give the lad’s mother a break so she could work in peace. He wasn’t surprised, she was the kindest, most generous-spirited dwarf he knew, he just marveled that she could find the time.

“You haven’t seen Thráin, have you?” he asked, sotto voce.

Dóra shook her head, “No, I thought you were running errands all day.”

“That got cut a bit short, on his account,” Fundin remarked, a little annoyance bleeding into his voice. “Or mine, or...I don’t know. It’s this wedding business, it’s got him at his most…”

“Difficult?” Dóra supplied.

“I was going to say stone-headed,” Fundin grumbled. “But that’s about the same thing.”

She smiled briefly, a smile that was more sympathetic than he thought Thráin deserved. “I think he’s a little overwhelmed,” Dóra theorized. “You know he doesn’t like a fuss.”

“It’s not _his_ wedding,” Fundin replied. “All he has to do is stand in the temple, eat, dance a bit, then go to bed. Oh, and wear a new suit of clothing. I dislike the tailor’s as much as anyone, but I suffered through. He caused such a scene, it’s easier to think he’s fifteen and not fifty!”

“I know,” Dóra said, patting Fundin’s arm consolingly. “I know it’s frustrating when he gets...upset, but once he’s had a sulk, he’ll be alright. I don’t care if he wears a new suit, he can come in his night things and it won’t bother me.”

“Well, you’ll be the only thing worth looking at,” Fundin smiled at Dóra. “What’re you wearing, anyway? Or am I meant to be surprised?”

“Ah…” Dóra began, but was cut off by a sigh and a grateful whisper.

“You’re a _witch_ , a good witch if ever there was one,” Glóa informed Dóra with great tenderness as she picked up her son and relieved her of him. “His father’s just come for him - and I see you’ve got better company by far."

Fundin gave the ‘dam a shallow bob of his head which she returned a little more deeply, though she had a mischievous smile on her face. “Anytime you want to borrow mine,” she said as she took her leave, “you’re welcome to them. Practice, eh? If the Maker’s feeling kind, by this time next year, you might have one of your own on the way.”

For the first time since Thráin kicked up a fuss at the tailor’s Fundin felt a sudden jab of sympathy for his nephew. At least, he suddenly became very much acquainted with the feeling of being taken off-guard and completely overwhelmed. Through rather than running, he felt glued to the spot, his whole body encased in lead; it took Dóra calling his name to snap him out of it and he didn’t feel sanguine for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I mean, _really._ Dómarra can't be the ONLY problem they face, right? It's not fun unless everyone gets in on the angst!


	21. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so everyone knows, Dómarra's coming and I'm going to put in a general warning for the rest of the fic -
> 
>  
> 
> **Warning - Dysfunctional family relationships, dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship, parental disapproval, verbal and emotional abuse.**

In a bizarre change from their usual lessons, it was Dóra who found it impossible to concentrate and Thráin who called for her attention. Every scuffle of feet outside the door made her tense and when a shadow passed the windows, she would raise her head a bit to see if she recognized the profile. It was driving him up the wall.

“Are you waiting on Fundin?” he asked, pronouncing his uncle’s common name with the same degree of respect one might accord a leaky drainage pipe. “I can go if I’m too much trouble when you’ve got _pining_ and _sighing_ to get on with.”

Dóra shot him a very annoyed look that shut his mouth, though Thráin did not stop scowling. “I am not waiting for your uncle,” she said, her tone more clipped and terse than usual. “I’m sorry, I’m being inattentive, go on.”

“Go on with what?” Thráin asked, twisting his mouth and narrowing his eyes in his favorite everyone-around-me-is-a-blinking-idiot expression. “You were _supposed_ to be marking my grammar.”

“Was I?” Dóra asked, blinking down at the paper before her in surprise. She hadn’t even inked her pen. “I’m sorry, Thráin dear. Perhaps we ought to end early tonight, hmm?”

Far from looking pleased, Thráin suddenly became concerned. “Are you ill?” he asked leaning forward and smacking the back of his hand against his tutor’s brow. She caught his wrist and sent him back into his chair. “You never want to end early.”

“I’m feeling a trifle queasy,” she admitted, rising now to look out the window at the corridor outside her office. “But I’m not ill...I...there’s a caravan coming from the Iron Hills, there’s no harming in saying so, of course there isn’t. My mother will be coming with that caravan. I haven’t seen her in a while, I’m a wee bit anxious about meeting her.”

“Anxious?” Thráin asked, interested. “Why? Is your amad a legend? Have I heard of her? Does she have a title? How many orcs has she slain?”

“Not a one, not as far as I know,” Dóra replied, turning back to her pupil. Thráin folded his arms and gazed skeptically at her across the table, rocking his chair backward to balance on two legs.

“How imposing can she be, then?” he asked rhetorically. _“My_ Ama’s slain a hundred thousand orcs and a million goblins and a dragon besides, and you’re not anxious when you meet her, are you?”

Dóra was about to explain that although the Queen Under the Mountain was indeed fearsome warrior, she had a kind nature, but Thráin snapped his fingers suddenly as if all the world’s secrets had been revealed to him in one burst of insight.

“And Fundin!” he added. “You aren’t frightened of Fundin and he could snap you in two, I’ll bet, you’re so skinny. Or have your head off with a butter knife in one clean blow.”

“But he _wouldn’t,”_ Dóra said firmly, not enjoying the contemplation of her death at the hands of her intended as much as Thráin seemed to. “Your amad and your uncle are very good sorts who I see nearly every day and familiarity breeds comfort.”

Thráin did not understand. How could someone be nervous around their own mother? “But she’s your _Ama._ Why wouldn’t you be - ”

A knock on the door cut him off and a messenger poked his head in, bowing in a perfunctory manner. “Milady, the travelers from the East have arrived and your presence has been requested by the Gate.”

“Thank you,” Dóra replied, pocketing Thráin’s unmarked writing assignment distractedly. She looked around her office and frowned, patted her hair in a distracted manner, then took her spectacles off and pocketed them. “Thráin, dear, I am _awfully_ sorry about this, but I have to - ”

“It doesn’t matter,” he grumbled, stuffing the paper into his satchel with rather more force than necessary, pulling a rather sour face. Dóra reached out and patted his arm, which Thráin bore with a disgruntled snort before she turned and left him alone in the office.

That was the way of it, he supposed. He was always less important. Came of being the son of the King. Mountain first, then everything else. And so it was with Dóra and Fundin, for they would be married soon and everything other than the two of them would cease to matter. For a second, Thráin eyed the inkpots around and wondered how cross Dóra would be if he not-so-accidentally toppled a few on his way out, but he dismissed the thought as being cruel. It wasn’t as if Dóra was ignoring him on purpose - not yet, anyway - and he probably ought to start resigning himself to his fate quickly, before the wedding.

Besides, curiosity had gotten the better of him. If Dóra’s amad was not an orc-slaying, sword-wielding warrior, he had no idea what sort of dwarf she might be that would make his tutor nervous. And he wanted to find out.

It wasn’t difficult, catching up to Dóra, he had longer legs than she did, though she could move quickly when she wanted to. Thráin was rather pleased with himself, all told, it was rather like stalking a deer on a hunting trip - a very short deer who let out a constant stream of ‘Excuse mes’ and ‘Pardon mes’ as she flew through the halls, which made her fairly easy to keep track of.

There might be potential for him as a hunter after all, he thought, ducking behind a pillar to watch the arrival of the visitors from the Iron Hills. There were a fair few of them, dressed in traveling clothes, so Thráin could not guess their professions or rank by their attire or comportment. Several seemed to be lords and ladies, judging by the manner in which they greeted his father, shallow inclinations of their heads and familiar smiles.

Thráin tried to pick Dóra out of the crowd, but was briefly frustrated by the crush of people pouring in, they had quite obscured her. Then, finally, he spotted her a little off to the side, embracing another dwarrowdam who he assumed had to be her allegedly frightening mother.

Dóra had exaggerated, Thráin decided immediately. The Lady was taller than her and not as slight, but she wasn’t very big herself or very broad. Her hair was the color of a dull penny and she didn’t seem to have very sharp eyes, judging by the way she squinted down at her daughter, eyes narrow, mouth drawn up in a pucker. She must need eyeglasses, as Dóra did, Thráin decided, and wondered why she wasn’t wearing any.

“How were the roads?” Thráin heard Dóra’s soft inquiry and moved a little closer.

Hmm. That was curious. Dóra’s voice was...like bubbles foaming up at the top of a beer. And when she had questions to ask it became moreso, she’d tilt her head and her eyes would go wide and she looked at you as if you were the most interesting person in the world - even when she already knew the answer, which she nearly always did. That wasn’t what she sounded like when she talked to her mother. Her voice was lower, softer, less excited. Like dust swept under the bed.

“Wet,” was her mother’s short reply. “I want a hot bath and a quiet room - I trust you’ve seen to it?”

“Aye, ma’am,” she nodded, twisting her hands in front of her nervously. “Aired and everything...if you want to go straight to bed, that’s alright, I wasn’t sure if you wanted to meet - ”

“I don’t care to see anyone tonight,” Dóra’s mother said with an imperious little wave of her hand that set Dóra nodding and her hands twisting again. The taller, older dwarrowdam swept away and though Dóra tried to follow along behind her, she held out a hand to stop her progress. “I have things coming along. Wait for them, if you would. I’ve had quite enough of _company_ for today.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Dóra said again, slipping into the shadows cast by the pillars. She received no thank-you, nor even a backwards glance.

Thrór found her before long; decades of keeping an eye out for his son in quiet, unoccupied corners honed his ability to locate folk who didn’t want to be found. Thráin held his breath to make himself as narrow as possible, but his father focused all his attention on his scribe.

“Where’s your mother got to, lass?” he asked, sounding a little concerned.

“She went up to her room, she was very tired,” Dóra replied, scuffing the toe of her boot on the stone floor.

“Without you?” Thrór asked, his voice taking on an incredulous tone.

Dóra shrugged, “I’m waiting for her bags.”

Thráin rarely saw his father look cross - disapproving, aye, occasionally, or even frustrated, but anger was something he tried very hard not to show his son. The look that passed over his face was foreign to Thráin, as was the fact that he did not say anything to Dóra to cheer her, though the slump of her shoulders and turn of her lips indicated that she wanted cheering. Thrór just patted her shoulder in a fatherly way and turned when his attention was called from her by another new arrival.

The hall slowly emptied of occupants, most intent on walking to the dining halls and feasting after such a long journey. Dóra stood back, unnoticed by the crowd, until she caught the sleeve of one of the servants and requested that he please bring the Lady Dómarra’s things to her brother’s suite as his earliest convenience. The message delivered, she paused in the nearly-deserted entrance hall.

“Dóra!” one of the guardswomen called out, with a smile and a wave. “Going in for supper?”

“Not just yet,” she replied, with a pale imitation of her usual broad smile. “Erm. No. I think...I think supper in my rooms tonight.”

“That’s not sociable,” the guardswoman tutted. “Come along, bad day? Good company will fix that.”

“Thank you,” Dóra replied, not sounding thankful in the least bit, “but no. I’m not...I’m afraid I’m not very good company. Just now. Excuse me.”

After she’d gone, Thráin left his hiding place, feeling more confused than satisfied. He did not believe that Lady Dómarra was frightening (he could probably disarm her in a fight, if push came to shove, of that he was fairly confident, so if Dóra needed him to be her champion for some reason, he’d oblige her), but her coming had worked the strangest transformation on his tutor.

Walking through the streets, he tried to make sense of it. Dóra wasn’t so shy and quiet around strangers - his mother still laughed to recall her giggling over the silliness of the Sovereigns of Dale her first day at court. She stood up to disrespectful scholars in the library, she told him all about the worst ones when she saw him afterward. The very first day he met her, she took his hands and smiled at him and talked so much that he hardly got a word in the whole hour they were together.

Strangers did not make her nervous. Maybe Dóra got more worried the longer she’d known someone.

Thráin could understand that. He hated talking to anyone he didn’t already know, but some days he turned bashful - bashful was his father’s word, one he didn’t like, it made him sound like a child, but it was better than his mother’s preferred explanation of ‘obstinate’ - around dwarves he’d known all his life. He’d say something and think it sounded stupid and that whoever he’d been speaking to would then think he was stupid and the next time they talked they’d spend the whole conversation thinking about how stupid he was. And then every subsequent conversation they’d have they’d spend waiting for Thráin to say something stupid. So it was sometimes easier not to bother.

But Dóra wasn’t like that. She’d known Thráin himself going on three years - she knew him so well that he was forbidden from uttering the word ‘stupid’ in her presence because she knew how upset he got when he thought he was being stupid. And she’d never gone shy around him. She’d gone from taking his hand cordially to embracing him sometimes when he’d had a bad afternoon. She even kissed him a few times, on the cheek, but still. She only got more comfortable with him on closer acquaintance. The first time she’d met Fundin they’d stammered at each other and now they were getting _married._ Yet she got twitchy and mousey when her mother stepped through the door. It didn’t make any sense.

Thráin’s wandering took him down to the armory where the warriors were engaging one another in combat, his mother overseeing the crashing of shields and swords. She saw him and gave him a brief smile when he came in, gesturing that he should sit and watch. He did so, edging around the very edge of the ring of combat, safe from the flailing arms and bodies until he reached her side. Sigdís ruffled his hair when he came to stand beside her, then used his head as an armrest as she shouted at the lads in front of her to correct their stances.

She didn’t pay her son any more mind until the training party broke up for supper, but Thráin realized what it was about Dóra’s mother’s conduct that struck him so oddly. She hadn’t smiled at her. Not once. Thráin had just seen his mother at breakfast, she had to keep an eye on the guardsmen, and she still managed a smile and a sign for him.

Dóra hadn’t seen Dómarra in ten years, at least. Her mother didn’t have anything to do apart from greet her daughter, but she hadn’t smiled.

Thráin still didn’t think he had the whole picture, but he was beginning to understand why Dóra’s mother made her nervous.

* * *

 

Supper was a quiet affair, almost silent. If she didn’t know better, Dóra would have thought they were enforcing Haldr’s ‘no talking after supper’ rule a bit early, but they weren’t. Haldr wasn’t even at table with them. If Dóra knew her brother, she was sure he was taking his evening meal at his desk and drinking himself into a state of inebriated passivity so that when he inevitably did come home to sleep, he wouldn’t start a row.

Dómarra spoke nothing at all to her daughter. She emerged from the bath in slippers, a robe, her hair wet and wrapped in a cloth to eat. Dóra only inquired as to whether or not the room was alright and received a, “Tolerable.” In response.

 _That means you’ve done well,_ she tried to convince herself, stabbing a roast carrot with her fork. _Praise is only valuable when meted out in small increments for extraordinary achievements. Telling the servants to do something is not praise-worthy._

They took wine with their dinner, rather than beer. Dómarra preferred it that way.

“How...how were the roads?” Dóra asked, unable to bear the silence a moment longer.

Dómarra looked coolly up from her plate, one eyebrow arched. “You’ve asked me that already and I made a reply.”

“Wet,” Dóra recalled, cheeks aflame. “Aye, you did.”

For a few more agonizing minutes, Dóra poked at her food and, unable to stop herself, spoke up again. “Are you going to be working on anything in particular while you’re here?”

That did it. She was able to relax enough to eat the rest of her dinner while her mother spoke at length about a difference of opinion she had with another scholar regarding the translation of a number of Numenorean texts that said scholar had published some years back, using source material from Erebor’s libraries as the basis for his research.

Well, actually, Dómarra did not believe they had a difference of opinion, she thought she was right and he was wrong, but Dóra tried to be more circumspect as she listened; she knew the scholar in question tolerably well and Rikr had been conducting painstaking research for thirty years. Even if her mother declared it so, Dóra could not agree that his methods were ‘sloppy,’ but she nodded along and stuffed her mouth full of bread every time it seemed that she was about to be asked her opinion regarding the texts.

Once her mother’s plate was empty, Dómarra’s gaze wandered over to the still-closed entryway to their apartments. “Your brother is avoiding me.”

“Oh, no!” Dóra countered quickly. “He’s working late, clean-up, you know. It’s always the way of it in the springtime.”

“If he kept his staff in any semblance of order, it needn’t be,” she said, shaking her head disapprovingly. “They can’t expect the scholars to do it _for_ them, after all.”

“Of course not,” Dóra replied, though she privately felt that if the scholars were a bit neater in their perusing of the stacks - or, conversely, if they didn’t insist on being ‘helpful’ and tidying up on their own, it would save the library staff a good deal of time and effort once they’d gone. “But - ”

“Don’t lie for him,” Dómarra replied, rising and walking in the direction of her bedchamber. “I know when you’re lying, you’re an abominable actress.”

“I do apologize - ”

“Why?” she asked, rounding on her, fury fighting its way to the surface, twisting her mouth and darkening her eyes. “When you aren’t in the least bit sorry? You knew what you were doing. You oughtn’t have done it in the first place and there’s no use trying to make up for it now.”

Dóra held her breath and sank back against her chair. _Don’t cry, don’t cry, she doesn’t like to see you cry,_ she thought to herself, feeling the tell-tale sting of tears despite her best efforts to hold it together. Her throat was tight, but that was little matter for her mother continued speaking and clearly did not expect a response.

“I hope you know I haven’t come here in a spirit of affable charity,” she informed her daughter, folding her arms over her chest and staring down at her imperiously. “And I’ve no intention of forgiving your present course.”

“Because I lied about Haldr?” Dóra inquired weakly.

Dómarra clicked her tongue and replied tartly, “Of course _not_ , you foolish girl. This _marriage_ , which I expressed my opposition to years ago. I had faith enough in you to believe that you would take your mother’s good advice. I assumed - wrongly, of course - that your refusal to include a word about that guardsman in your subsequent letters meant that you heeded me. You were never a deceitful child, but now I see that this court and too much of your brother’s influence has had a bad effect on your nature.”

Dóra had nothing to say to that. What could she say? It wasn’t as if her mother was wrong, after all. She’d been lying for two years. Lies of omission, but lies nevertheless.

“But,” Dómarra swept away, turning her head sharply as if she was too disgusted to look at her. “You are of age. You can ruin your life as you see fit and I haven’t the power to stop you.”

“I’m not ruining my life,” Dóra said quietly, but firmly, eyes on the table and not her mother’s back.

Dómarra did not extend her the courtesy of a reply. She swept up the stairs without a backward glance and did not turn when she paused, her hand upon the doorhandle. “You were supposed to be _better_ than this,” she muttered cryptically, then shut herself up in her bedroom and locked the door.

Halldóra rang for a servant to take the plates and cups away. She stood by as the dwarrowdam removed the remains of the supper and let the tears flow freely down her face, not caring whether the ‘dam marked them or not. Even if she had, it wasn’t her place to comment.

Eyes only a little swollen and face only a little blotchy, she left the suite quietly and walked the long halls and still-bustling streets to the library with her head bowed slightly, eyes on the floor. She was so small that few marked her progress and she couldn’t abide the thought of making conversation with an acquaintance or even a friend at the moment.

Books were so much easier, she thought as she secreted herself away in a corner carrel, removing Thráin’s assignment from the inner pocket of her coat. Pen and ink were acquired and she busied herself marking his grammar at last. He done it very carefully too, a few mistakes here and there, but overall it was a wonderful improvement from where he’d started, three years ago. She ought to have congratulated him when they were together, not shooed him out of her office as she had done.

With a quiet moan she placed her head on her arms and sighed deeply. Just as disappointing a teacher as she was a student, it seemed. Cakes, she decided vaguely. Thráin was at his most forgiving when she gave him sweets. And she’d not inquired why he’d done a runner at the tailor’s, a question she was going to ask on Fundin’s behalf. What a miserable day it had been.

Something soft brushed her temple and for one horrified instant, Dóra was sure a rat was crawling by her ear and she sat up with a gasp. Not a rat, she realized, when the figure next to her chuckled, but close. Haldr.

“Gone away so soon?” he asked, leaning on the high wall of the carrel. “She must be in fine form.”

“She’s asleep,” Dóra informed him. “It’s safe to come out.”

Haldr squinted and got close enough to her face that she could smell the whiskey on his breath; he’d fortified himself against their mother’s arrival after all.

“You’ve been crying,” he observed aloud, running a hand through the thinning hair on the top of his head. “I’ll _kill_ her.”

“You won’t,” she said, shaking her head in alarm. “You won’t, you’ll only shout at her and I’ll get it twice as harshly the next time she’s in a mood, so - ”

“She’s always in a mood and you always get it twice as harshly and do you want to know why?”

Dóra popped a cork back in the bottle of ink to give herself some occupation before she replied, “Because I’m a disappointment?”

“Because you’re an easier target,” Haldr said matter-of-factly. “Her strikes _always_ hit their marks with you. Me? I couldn’t care less what the old bat thinks and so she derives less satisfaction from prodding me.”

If there was any truth at all in what her brother said, Dóra might have been insulted. But she fancied she knew him a bit better than to believe half of what Haldr spoke - or to believe that Haldr believed half of what he spoke.

“If that’s so, why weren’t you at dinner?” Dóra asked, trying to keep the accusation from her voice. Part of her longing to have her brother there was utterly self-interested; when he and their mother fought, a good deal of focus was taken off of her.

“Because I’m a selfish bastard, that’s why,” he said, patting her on the head. “Leaving you alone to face her. She’s asleep?”

“The door’s locked,” his sister shrugged. “I don’t think she’ll be coming out, except to use the necessary, in all likelihood.”

Haldr pulled a face and glanced around speculatively, “Hmm. Then I’ll go up to bed. Coming?”

Dóra shook her head, “I’ll read for a bit.”

“You can read at home.”

“Aye,” Dóra agreed. “I could. I’d just rather not.”

“Stay the night with your beau,” Haldr advised, walking away. “He always seems to cheer you up.”

Halldóra considered it - there wasn’t a moment that passed all day when she hadn’t wished she was with Fundin, talking to him, supping with him, or in his arms, but she couldn’t go running to him every time she was the least little bit unhappy. She was marrying him to become his partner in life, she didn’t want to become a burden.

“He has the night watch,” she said, which wasn’t a lie. She had a key to his rooms, she might have easily let herself in and made herself comfortable in his bed, but when he came in at dawn, he’d probably wake her up and remark what a pleasant surprise it was to find her there. And that would lead to wondering why she’d gone to sleep in his room when hers was perfectly serviceable. And that would lead to a conversation that was better off not being had between two people who were going to be half-asleep when they got to talking. Better to avoid the whole thing.

Rather than removing herself to the comfort of Fundin’s rooms for the night, she curled up in a cozy armchair in the reading room. The library never closed its doors and the fires burned bright and warm through the day and night. There Dóra set herself up with a book of history and got through most of it before her eyes started to sting and she thought she’d close them for a minute.

When next she woke, it was to Sága shaking her arm and asking her whatever was she _doing_ there, since court was to convene in a quarter of an hour and she was going to be late.


	22. Chapter Four

Fundin expected his intended to be a little frazzled by her mother’s arrival. Her exact words to him yesterday morning, “She might want to meet you, but probably not, so if you don’t hear from me by noontime, just go about your day as planned,” did not inspire confidence that the visit was fated to go particularly well.

What he was _not_ expecting was for Dóra to come running in to court ten minutes after Thrór’s arrival, out of breath, wearing yesterday’s clothing with hair that looked as if it hadn’t been brushed or rebraided since she’d gone to bed.

Signing her apologies to Thrór as she mounted her perch, he saw her cheeks burning red. Their king made the sign for ‘all is well,’ hastily, as the Elven fellow who requested an audience eyed her with an expression that could only be called curious, if not a little disgruntled.

Fundin tried to catch her eye, but Dóra wrote with her head bowed so low her bedraggled curls were scraping the parchment. Though he thought she was the prettiest girl in the world, the fact was she was looking less than her best; she was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes that implied a restless night. Even so, once she was settled, Dóra dutifully performed the task set for her, quills flashing and ink smearing her brow when she rested her head in her palm.

When court adjorned for the day, Dóra rushed to Thrór in a panic, jumping the last three steps from her podium and wringing her hands fretfully.

“I do apologize - !” she began, but Thrór held a hand up to silence her. Then he opened his arms.

“Come here,” he said, beckoning her closer with a twitch of his fingers. Dóra walked up the dais toward the throne and let Thrór pull her into a firm embrace. “No matter. Everyone has one day a month when they have trouble rising, eh?”

Dóra took an uncertain step back when he released her and she nodded mutely. The throne room was empty save for herself, Thrór, and Fundin who lingered when the rest of the guard broke up to attend to other duties.

“Fundin can tell you what you missed, can’t you, my lad?”

He wasn’t so sure of that - to be honest, he’d been rather distracted wondering where she was, which was more important to him than whatever the Woodland Realm wanted to report - but he nodded and stepped beside Dóra, laying a gauntlet-covered hand on her shoulder.

“Peckish?” he asked, taking his helm off with his free hand.

“I could eat,” she nodded glumly and let him lead her off toward the dining hall.

They trod on in silence for a few minutes before Fundin ventured to ask what was wrong.

“Nothing,” Dóra said shortly, unusually terse. “Er. That is to say...I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Up late talking to your mother?” he guessed, but she shook her head, not raising her eyes to meet his.

“Reading,” she corrected, moving just a little faster, wiggling out from under his hand. “I was in the library, I only meant to rest my eyes for a minute, then Sága was there shouting about how I was late…”

“Does Sága shout?” Fundin asked, confused. “I thought she didn’t know how.”

He was trying to make light of it all, to lift her spirits, but his paltry attempt at humor fell remarkably flat since Dóra usually laughed even at his worst jokes. She scurried on, taking two quick steps for every stride of his, keeping herself just far enough ahead of him that he couldn’t catch her.

“You’re upset,” he said, quietly. “Why, what happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Dóra replied. “I’m not upset. I’m just tired. I’m sorry, I’m not good company right now.”

“Well, I don’t mind that,” Fundin said, before he realized how insulting that sounded. “I mean - wait, you’re never _not_ good company.”

“It’s alright, you can go, don’t let me keep you.”

“I - wait, no, Dóra you’re not keeping me - _wait.”_ He practically jumped in front of her, clanging in his full suit of armor, but at least she stopped scuttling off like a frightened mouse. Rather than look him in the face, Dóra took her spectacles off and started cleaning them hurriedly on her sleeve.

Fundin’s fingers itched to grasp her chin and make her look at him, but she wasn’t one of his nephews and he felt he couldn’t take the liberty, not when she was visibly upset and refusing to tell him why. It was the lack of confidence that chafed, not her mood. She could rail at him and he’d take it quite joyfully if only he wasn’t plagued by the impression that she was keeping secrets. Shouldn’t she be able to tell him anything? If they were going to be married.

“It’s nothing,” she said softly. “Just...tired and hungry. That’s all. And a bath wouldn’t go amiss, I’m sure.”

It clearly wasn’t all, but Fundin never made any pretensions to genius, so he decided to let it go. “Alright,” he said, a little uncertainly. Then flashed a cheeky smile at her. “Want company in the baths?”

That got her looking at him anyway and she _almost_ smiled. “If you aren’t busy…”

“I’ve a few hours to myself,” he replied easily. “This time of day, the baths’ll be empty, unless you’d rather make it - ”

“Halldóra!”

The gradual relaxation of Dóra’s face and shoulders ceased and she drew herself up tight again, forehead wrinkling nervously. It was the oddest thing, like being thrown back in time to what Dóra had been like when he first knew her. Ducking her head, making herself smaller than she was, twisting her hands together with nerves - but even then, she smiled. Even then she spoke. Now she was biting her lip and lowering her eyes and Fundin knew the dwarrowdam stalking up the corridor toward them must be her mother.

They looked alike...a bit, he supposed. Her mother’s hair was lighter, she was more solid of form, her eyes a different color, but they had the same high forehead, the same wide mouth. Only Dómarra’s was screwed up in a pucker, like she had been sucking on lemons and there was a bit of a manic gleam in her eye that Fundin found more typical of Haldr than Dóra. She didn’t spare a second look at Fundin and grasped Dóra’s arm at the elbow, pulling her away from him.

“Come along - your brother’s moved everything, out of spite, I shouldn’t doubt,” Dómarra said, her voice clipped and businesslike. “I trust you know your way around the stacks.”

“Aye - but I was just about to…” Dóra trailed off, looking uncertainly from Fundin to the dining hall.

“Wait. It won’t kill you,” Dómarra turned away, dragging her daughter along after her. “I’ve been waiting all morning - hours wasted! Never mind the weeks of study I forewent on the roadways - all on _your_ account, don’t forget. It wouldn’t be too taxing for you, I hope, to spare me an _hour_ of your time?”

“I...an hour, alright,” Dóra replied weakly. She dug her heels in a little and said, “Amad, this is - ”

“Your betrothed, aye, I’d gathered,” Dómarra said, stopping long enough to give Fundin a quick, cold look. “I have nothing to say to him. Come _along_ , child.”

In the interests of avoiding conflict, Fundin ought to have done nothing. He should have carried on or left them with an assurance that he would see Dóra later. But Fundin was a warrior, not a diplomat and though he considered himself a polite enough fellow, there was a limit to what he would endure.

He tried to be amiable, he really did. His sister always said he had a sweet disposition, in truth it took a lot to rile his anger and he had been _trying_ to give Halldóra’s mother the benefit of the doubt. From the little Dóra said about her, he’d gathered that she was icy-hearted, but he thought maybe she’d thaw on closer acquaintance. Evidently not.

“We have plans,” he said, reaching out and snagging Dóra’s free arm.

“And I have work,” Dómarra countered. Her grip on her daughter’s wrist tightened and she glared down at her. “Or are you a dwarf of leisure now? Content to rank pleasure above craft?”

“She ranks her own work high enough, she’s not an apprentice who’s got to run off and help you with yours,” Fundin’s reply was less than cordial, his tone biting. If Dóra wouldn’t stand up for herself, he’d do it for her - imagine, the nerve of this ‘dam, thinking she could come marching on Erebor and snap her fingers to call her grown daughter to attention!

But Dóra shook _his_ arm off and when she looked up at him, her large brown eyes were full of apology. “Just an hour,” she said quietly. “And Haldr _did_ do a bit of shifting...I’ll see you soon. Promise.”

Fundin had no way of knowing it, but Dóra’s words to him prompted the first smile to go flashing across her mother’s face since the ‘dam set foot in the Mountain.

What could he do but let her go? Fundin wasn’t about to order Dóra about.

Neither was he about to enter the dining hall; he’d quite lost his appetite. Instead, he made his solitary way back into his own rooms to change into work clothes. Something told him that Dóra was going to be longer away than a mere ‘hour.’

When his sister found him three hours later, he was pummeling the stuffing out of a combat practice dummy. Quite literally; the damn thing was going to require replacing.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked, leaning on the doorway of the otherwise deserted hall. “Dóra was looking for you.”

Fundin stopped and looked at her, agog. “Was she? I thought she was with her mother.”

“She finished - oh, no, don’t tell me,” Dísa knocked the flat of her hand against her head and groaned. “Her Ma’s come and you’re jealous that your lassie’s attention’s distracted?”

“No,” Fundin glowered - though he couldn’t deny, the promise of a soak with Dóra had been an awfully tempting way to spend the afternoon. “I just...I don’t like her.”

“Dóra?”

“No!” Fundin looked shocked at the very implication. “Of course not! Her _mother.”_

The urge to stomp his feet and add, in a petulant whinge, _She didn't want to meet me,_ was overwhelming, but Fundin stayed the impulse; Dísa would only laugh at him for being oversensitive.

As it was, she was smirking in a way that Fundin didn’t much care for. “Thought as much. But I was wondering - if it’s the mother you’re vexed at, why avoid Dóra?”

“I’m not avoiding Dóra,” he scowled, looking around for a towel to wipe the worst of the sweat off. His sister threw one at his head.

“Oh,” she replied in an airy manner that did not suit her at all and Fundin found some of his still-burning ire turning in _her_ direction. Ordinarily Dísa said what she meant. This dancing around an issue in an effort to make him realize that he was being stupid or bull-headed about something was usually Gróin’s preferred tactic, not hers. “Well, you could have fooled me, then. No sense in taking time away from Dóra if it’s the mother you don’t like. She went looking for you, couldn’t find you. Called in the cavalry.”

It might’ve been the sweat chilling on his skin, but Fundin felt himself go cold all at once. So she _had_ only taken a bit of time with the mother. He was amazed she was able to get herself away, with Dómarra wrenching her about; she was only a slight little thing, after all.

“So, what’s all this ten?” Dísa asked, gesturing vaguely to the destruction of the practice dummy. “It’s only been a day, Dóra’s off her sleep, you look fit to be tied and Thrór’s talking about exile. I’d be impressed with Dómarra if she wasn’t causing so much trouble.”

“I don’t like her manner with Dóra, that’s all,” Fundin replied evasively. It didn’t seem his place to talk about what he and Dóra shared amongst themselves, how cruel she’d been to her when she was a child. He’d hoped this visit would be different, that it would go well, but less than five minutes in the ‘dam’s presence disabused him of that notion.

“Right,” Dísa said, giving him a looking-over that made him feel self-conscious. “Listen...no, actually, don’t listen. Just go off and find your lassie. Not everyone gets on with their parents, you know.”

She left him there after that cryptic comment, Fundin staring at the spot where she’d been a little forlornly.

Because, honestly? He really didn’t know.

* * *

 

Dóra was drawn up in fretful knots by the time Fundin found her. She still hadn’t eaten or changed clothes and she looked even more panicked than she had when she came bounding into court.

Hadn’t she said she wouldn’t be long? Hadn’t she promised?

It was ridiculous, she noted in a distant portion of her mind that was still capable of rational thought, to be so worked up about this. Likely Fundin found something to occupy himself and forgot. It wasn’t that he’d taken her leaving him as a personal rejection, he wasn’t off loathing her somewhere, as he? He still trusted her, didn’t he?

She didn’t know if she was more relieved when Fundin tapped her on the shoulder or anxious.

“Lost track of time,” he said apologetically. His tunic was unbelted and he wore no coat, his hair was matted down where sweat clung to it. Training with the Guard? But he said he had a few free hours... “You’re finished.”

Dóra nodded, “Aye, ages ago. There were a few things she wanted me to collect, she didn’t trust the staff to do the job correctly.”

There was something distasteful in Fundin’s expression, Dóra was sure it had to do with her mother’s prior rudeness so she took a breath and went on, “I am so sorry about what she said - not wanting to talk to you. It’s just that she hasn’t had time to get any work done and, well, idleness is just awful for her, even though she was traveling, it’s not conducive to study, you know. Have you eaten?”

Fundin probably ought to have accepted her apology or told her it was unnecessary, that there was no cause for her to take the blame for her mother’s behavior, but Dóra moved on so quickly, he wasn’t sure how to dismiss her concern. All he managed to do was answer the question put to him, “No.”

“Ah,” Dóra replied. She gestured vaguely into the hall and asked, “Do you want to - ”

“Aye,” he nodded, taking her hand. They both relaxed considerably over their meal, in between sips of beer, Dóra regaled him with tales from the vaults - most involving her brother overreacting spectacularly to some little incident or other. She seemed entirely recovered from the unfamiliar mousey persona she had adopted in her mother’s presence.

When they’d finished eating, both felt a bit better - and Fundin felt cheeky enough to brush a thumb across Dóra’s brow as he murmured, “How about that bath now?” which was a sign that he was well and truly recovered from his fit of pique.

Dóra grinned at him and took his hand. She had some work she rather wanted to get done before the day’s end, but this felt slightly more necessary. A renewal of their impromptu plans of the morning would be a sure sign that all was well between herself and Fundin.

The public baths were not overly crowded and they managed to find a deep sunken tub filled with steaming water that could accommodate the two of them rather splendidly. Fundin got in first and Dóra waved off the attendants that she might unbraid his hair herself. When she eased herself down into the lightly scented water, he did the same to her.

“You’d make a rotten attendant,” she teased, throwing him a mischievous look over her shoulder. “You take _ages_ letting down my hair.”

“I’m savoring the experience,” Fundin said, running his fingers through her curls. He tugged one, just because it amused him to watch them spring back to form before they got so heavy with water that they stayed weighted down. “You’ve got very fine hair.”

Dóra made to turn round, but slipped a little on the stone and stumbled in the water. Fundin caught her under the arm and pulled her up before her head went under. Water flooding her nose made her cough and he thumped her back gently, concern all over his face. “Alright?”

Dóra nodded, a little embarrassed. “Fine - this is why I don’t get in water deeper than a tub.”

“Do you not know how to swim?” Fundin asked, wracking his brain to recall an occasion upon which Dóra had been called upon to exercise proficiency in the water and coming up short.

“No, not at all,” she shook her head. Fundin didn’t mean to - she was _sure_ he didn’t mean to - but the way he looked at her when she confessed that she was lacking particular skills such as horsemanship, archery, and swimming, for example, that made her feel very small and inadequate. She was sure she never looked at him in such a manner when the subject of all the books he hadn’t read came up.

“Do you want to learn?” he asked, as he always did. Ordinarily, Dóra found the inquiry rather sweet, the offer big-hearted and generous. At the moment, she just felt lacking.

“Not today,” she said, slipping out of his grip and scooting back onto the firm stone. She sank down a little the water lapping around her shoulders, then her chin, soaking her beard through. “I’ve no plans to go to sea.”

“I’m glad,” Fundin said simply, cocking his head and peering down at her. “I’d miss you.”

Her hand found his beneath the water and they sat in a long silence, each brimming with things they wanted to tell the other, reassurances they needed, questions they wanted to ask. _Are you alright? Are we alright? What can I do to make you feel better?_

But neither spoke. Their muscles might have eased and the day’s dirt might have been washed from their bodies, but their hearts and minds remained burdened, even when they bid one another good-afternoon, clean, but not refreshed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaand now we have Fundin and Dóra showing their true Durin colors! By not actually having a conversation. There are a few plot threads dropped here that I wish I could have spent more time on, but I wanted to get this posted before I went away for the weekend, so they're going to have to wait a bit before they develop.


	23. Chapter Five

The Queen stopped her on the way out of court, laying one massive hand on Dóra’s shoulder and fumbling in her pockets with another until she came up with a scrap of paper, hastily scrawled on. Dóra squinted down at it and made out a street name and what appeared to be the name of a shop. The scribe looked questioningly up at Dísa who gave her a wry smile and explained.

“Royal clothiers. Do good work on short notice - I ought to know, wasn’t a week before my wedding I stomped in with an order for new clothes,” she said. “Cost half a dragon’s coat - that’s being literal now - but they got it done.”

Dóra smiled back, weakly, looking back at the proprietess’s name, recognizing it upon her second look. Lady Dírfa, granddaughter of old King Óin by his third son. Absolutely renowned for her skill as a seamstress and weaver of cloth, kingdoms were ransomed over a single surcoat of her making.

Fine, fast work by hands exquisitely Made to do it. Fitting for a royal wedding, Dóra supposed, though it hadn’t even occurred to her to go to the royal clothiers. Foolish fancy, perhaps, but after her conversations with Glóa and Gílla she’d hoped her mother might have _some_ suggestion about what ought to be done. Or that she might at least offer to accompany her to the fitting so she didn’t pick out a fabric or embellishments that made her look awful.

She’d nearly asked at least half a dozen times, but every time she came close to broaching the subject, Dómarra would manage to turn it back to her own research and Dóra well knew the fruitlessness of trying to get Amad off the subject of work.

Haldr was right out, there was no point in asking. Not only would he refuse,he would probably question the necessity of having new clothes commissioned at all. Sága came to mind as a possible helpmate in this endeavor, but Dóra didn’t want to trouble her. She wasn’t _actually_ her daughter, after all, and Sága cared even less for clothing and fashion than Dóra herself, she wore clothes until they were ready for patching before she discarded them and commissioned another pair of trousers or set of tunics or coats made in the same style and, if possible, fabric as before.

It was a surprise - and a bit of an embarrassment - for Dísa to lend a hand. For the Queen Under the Mountain to have noticed her plight, she must have been making a terrible muddle of everything. Beneath her fine court robes, the older dam’s riding boots were well worn, her jerkin overused to the point that the leather was cracking and her tunic threadbare at the elbows. She was already taking the outer garment off and folding it over her arm as Dóra thanked her for her consideration.

“No trouble,” she shrugged. “Sent a messenger along, told them you’d be by after court. Today.”

“Today?” she asked, slowly, concerned that she’d misheard. No, no, not today, she was far too busy today. There were at least five hours she needed to make up in the scriptorium and she had her own research to conduct in the library and if she was in the library, Haldr would probably request that she remain after and put in an hour or two at the desk and -

“If not today, when?” Dísa interrupted Halldóra’s train of thought. When the lass made no further reply, she nodded, a suspicion confirmed. “Right. Off you go then.”

With a punch on the arm on her departure, Dísa strode out of the throne room, coat thrown haphazardly over her shoulder. Dóra remained behind for a beat, wriggling her numb fingers, then scampered off to find herself a trolley.

She couldn’t hope to make it to the clothier’s by running in any reasonable amount of time, but luckily the city beneath the Mountain employed an ingenious system of weights, cables and pulleys for (relatively) quick and (relatively) easy transport throughout Erebor, for the cost of a few pennies. If one didn’t mind crowding, heat, noise and occasional breakdowns that toss half the occupants into the street when the conductor pulled on the break abruptly, it was a most excellent way to travel.

Luck seemed to be on Dóra’s side and she hurried down the street, lined with shop after shop boasting the finest silks and wools, fitted by the most skillful hands the world over. Lady Dírfa plied her trade in one of the grandest and best appointed of them all. When Dóra gently tried the door handle, a bell tinkled above her head.

The shop was well-lit, with tall, untarnished mirrors that reflected a dozen apprehensive looking Dóras when she passed them. The walls were papered with pale pink silk shot through with golden thread in neat lines. There were well-cushioned chairs and stools for waiting and solid little perches for standing when trying on clothes behind screens, charmingly painted with scenes that Dóra recognized as deriving from the more famous romantic poems.

There was a touch of fragrance in the air and all around were reams and reams of beautiful fabrics above ivory chests containing embellishments to personalize every piece.

Dóra was more than overwhelmed when she stepped inside and had half a mind to turn around and try a different seamstress when a voice called from behind a painted screen, “Won’t be a moment!”

Precisely a moment later a young girl who appeared to be about Óin’s age skipped up to her, with a measuring tape wound several times around her neck. She was a pretty, slender thing with a long, hawk-like nose and almond-shaped hazel eyes. Her head was crowned with shining hair, an unusual shade of reddish-gold, and braided with purple ribbons. The girl’s beard promised to be a fine one when she grew up, but for now was modestly gathered into a single braid at her chin, wound with a golden chain.

“You are Lady Halldóra, are you not?” she asked, then grinned, huge and relieved when Dóra nodded, plowing on before the scribe could speak up. “Wonderful! We’d nearly given you up - Ama _has_ actually, she’s ruthless about punctuality. I said I’d stay after a few minutes, I mean to say, you’ve been at _court_ all day, how tedious!”

The girl grabbed Dóra around the wrist and before she could say two words to her, she was led behind one of the painted screens and the young lady was taking her belt off. It was rare to find herself out-spoken, but Dóra was so relieved that someone else was taking charge of the appointment that she didn’t have it in her to be annoyed.

“I’ve finally been cut free from the looms!” she announced proudly. “And you’re my first - not to worry, I’m only taking your measure. Sorry, would you rather undress yourself? Some folks are bashful, I ought to have asked.”

“I’ll help,” Dóra replied with a small smile, shrugging out of her coat, which the girl took and hung up on a hook before she returned for Dóra’s trousers and boots, folded and placed on an obliging shelf.

“No need to worry about your stockings and underthings,” the lass reassured her, then her eyes widened. “Oh! Unless you wanted some new underthings. We have some _beautiful_ Ironfist silks which would look just lovely trimmed with Firebeard lace. Not for everyday use, of course, but special, for the wedding night - ”

“Just the wedding clothes will be fine, thank you,” Dóra said, thinking in the back of her mind that the lassie looked a wee bit too young to be going on about what one ought to wear on their wedding night. Still, she was a straightforward girl and had such an eager way about her that Dóra found herself liking her immensely. “What are you called?”

“Oh!” the girl smacked herself on the forehead with the palm of her hand. “Goodness, I’m such a goose! Ama drilled me on introductions before - Irpa. I’m called Irpa, my mother owns this shop, but I’d rather you forget that as I’m not doing her any credit just now. It _is_ my first day…”

“You’re doing splendidly,” Dóra reassured her with a kind smile. She added, in a confidentially way, “It’s my first time purchasing wedding clothes, so we’re well-matched, aren’t we?”

Irpa laugh gaily and unwound her measuring tape, holding out her hand for Dóra’s tunic which she folded neatly and lay atop her trousers. “I’m glad you think so. Now, first thing’s first - oh my! Don’t you have a lovely bosom?”

It was not a compliment that she had ever received before, Dóra found herself a bit taken back. She glanced down, a bit self-consciously and replied with an uncertain, “Thank you.”

“No, really,” Irpa gushed. “You’re such a skinny thing, I thought your tailor must be devilish clever, but now I see we haven’t any miracle workers on the street to contend with. Muhudel Mahal, eh?”

That made Dóra laugh out loud. “I suppose,” she replied, grinning in earnest.

“Well, then,” Irpa said briskly, “arms up. Let’s start with your best bits first and make our way from there.”

Irpa was a whirlwind as she measured just about every bit of Dóra that could be measured, chattering away all the while. Her shoulders were not commented on, but her hips were pronounced to be ‘adequate,’ her waist, ‘so little it’s hardly worth mentioning,’ and her legs, ‘stubby.’

“Not too stiff on the bottom,” she advised. “You’ll look like a head on a stick. You’re going to want a fabric with movement and not too heavy an embellishment. Ama will know what’s best, she should return presently, just had a few outings. What are your colors?”

“Colors?” Dóra asked weakly.

Irpa nodded, ribbons waving in the little breeze she stirred up, “Aye, what colors did you want to wear? Some want to match their spouse, what’ll your intended be wearing?”

That was a very good question. What would Fundin be wearing? Hmm. Dóra thought and thought and searched her mind but she was positive the subject had not come up, the last time they talked about one of his appointments with the tailor all they discussed was Thráin’s fit of temper. She knew what Thráin would be wearing: black. Like he was going to the temple on the Day of Remembrance.

“Er…” Dóra’s face must have showed some of her panic because Irpa reached out and patted her shoulder in a motherly way. Absurd since Dóra was at least twenty years her senior, but she felt slightly comforted when Irpa got her a robe and led her out by the elbow.

“Let’s have a look round,” she offered. “See what catches your eye - only I’ll tell you now, Ama’s not going to want you in green or yellow. She thinks dwarves with brown hair look like trees turned backward when they’ve got green on and yellow won’t do anything for your complexion. Neither will orange, come to that, but you don’t strike me as the sort to wear orange.”

“In the interest of looking like neither a tree nor a pumpkin,” Dóra replied, “I’ll stay away from orange and green.”

“It’ll go easier for you,” Irpa winked, linking her arm in Dóra’s and walking her over to where the fabrics were folded and organized by type and color. She recommended the embroidered velvets, to start. “It drapes so beautifully and won’t make you look like a walking tapestry. Anything catching your eye?”

Dóra nibbled on her lower lip thoughtfully, mind feeling cast about on the wind. She had absolutely no idea, but she didn’t want to look like an idiot. She so _loathed_ feeling stupid, but she was not too proud to admit that she was utterly out of her depth - part of the reason she’d put it off so long. She simply had no idea what to do.

Purple? Ah, but that was hardly any better than black, was it? Green was out. Blue, perhaps. Irpa’s mother could hardly object to blue, could she? It was the color of the Mountain Guard...but Fundin was in the King’s Guard and they wore red…

Irpa was watching her with a singular intensity and noticed when Dóra’s eyes kept falling on one particular dark red bolt. “Why don’t I pull that down and you can take a look?” she said, already climbing the small ladder laid out for just that purpose. “No need to worry if you don’t like it, I can put it back as easily as I can take it out.”

It was very beautiful and very soft. That was all Halldóra could make of it for she had neither the necessary taste or training to truly appreciate such things. The stitches were tiny and perfect, but the loops and whorls of gilt thread did not add too much heaviness, nor did they stiffen the fabric too much.

“It’s very nice,” she said, hesitantly. What she _wanted_ to say was, ‘This will do, may I go now?’ but that seemed rude. She was probably supposed to waffle or ask for a dozen bolts of fabric to be taken down for her perusal, but she still had so very much to do and the fabric Irpa held in her hands would do just as well as any, she was sure. “Erm. I think that’s - ”

The bell rang again and a tall, stately dwarrowdam who must have been the mother bustled in, arms laden with parcels. “Oh!” she exclaimed, eyes narrowing in on Dóra. “You’ve turned up at last!”

The parcels were deposited upon an obliging armchair, another dwarf came in from a back room to take them away and with them, Dírfa’s foxfur wrap. The ‘dam fixed a pair of wire spectacles on the end of her nose and took the fabric away from her daughter, running her hands over it.

“How much has she shown you?” she asked, businesslike, but not dismissive. “Or have you only just begun.”

“I like that red,” Dóra replied meekly, pointing quite unnecessarily at the only piece of fabric she had closely examined.

“Maroon,” Dírfa corrected her. “Excellent choice - especially since you’re marrying a Guardsman, it’s traditional. Will he wear his court armor, do you know? I assume so, he is a figure of great renown.”

“And a figure that looks well in mail,” Irpa winked, suffering a bop on the nose of mild chastisement.

“Cheeky,” Dírfa scolded. “Very well, then, what are your thoughts on cut?”

A long silence followed in which Dóra belatedly realized that the question was being asked of _her_ and not actually an invisible dwarf behind her who actually had an opinion on the matter. Was this how dwarves felt when they approached the desk at the library? They came in, seeking one thing and then suddenly they were asked to clarify what they wanted, using terms that they did not even realize were clarifications? Suddenly, Dóra realized how every non-scholar who had to speak to her must feel every time she opened her mouth and she was nearly bowled over with pity for them.

But Dóra was clever. And a scholar. And as all good scholars knew, when one was in over one’s head, one ought to fake a level of competency which they did not actually have until they were back treading familiar waters again.

“Your reputation precedes you,” Dóra said honestly and it was _true_ , wasn’t it? What higher recommendation was there than one coming from the Queen under the Mountain? Albeit, it was a recommendation for a seamstress especially for dwarves who knew next to nothing about fashion, but that was beside the point. “I trust you to decide what’s best; I’d not want to meddle in the workings of a trade I have no mastery in.”

Dírfa’s eyes gleamed and she looked Dóra up and down appraisingly. “And the price?”

“No object,” she said smoothly. The statement had all the effect of a magical incantation, Dóra was drawn up in a warm half embrace and promised, “My dear, you won’t regret it! You’ll look just _ravishing.”_

She hoped that would be the end of it, but of course, it wasn’t. Dóra could practically feel the minutes slipping between her fingers like sand in an hourglass as she was hurried behind a screen and attired in some ill-fitting muslins, just to get ‘an idea,’ as Dírfa put it.

“So I might see what shapes are most flattering, dear,” she said, frowning, for she was unable to decide where she wanted the waist of the outermost garment to fall.

“I say underbust, Ama,” Irpa said, still buzzing about in the background. “It’ll make her look taller. And thicker through the waist.”

“It’ll make her look like a wedge,” Dírfa predicted grimly, shaking her head and gesturing for Dóra to put the other muslin back on. “She’s short and skinny whatever she’s wearing, there’s no use trying to disguise that. We’ll have to nip it in...seams down the waist, I think, we don’t want it to look like your legs start at your bosom, do we?”

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you,” Dóra replied, distractedly. There wouldn’t be time to settle in to the scriptorium...that would be _ten_ hours to make up, but she could take her work into her own rooms. Or she could avoid the library completely in favor of working through the night...court in the morning, she might be able to snatch an hour or two of sleep if she skipped breakfast…

“Gold?” Dírfa asked, cutting into her thoughts abruptly.

“...I think so?” Dóra said, though in truth she had no idea what she thought she was meant to be having about gold.

“And a high necked tunic?”

“Oh, low,” Irpa insisted. “Show yourself at your best advantage!”

Dírfa rounded on her daughter, at the edge of her patience. “Off you get,” she snapped. “I’m sure the Lady doesn’t want to hear your chatter - ”

“I don’t mind,” Dóra tried to speak up, but was drowned out by Irpa’s protest.

“A- _ma!_ You said I could do the fitting work!”

 _“If_ you didn’t make a nuisance of yourself,” Dírfa reminded her daughter, hands on her hips. “I’m sure you’re bothering the Lady Halldóra with your - ”

“She’s not,” Dóra insisted, more loudly this time. “Really, she’s been wonderfully helpful and I’d love to have her do the fitting work.”

‘Love’ might have been a wee overstatement, but Irpa’s cheerful face looked so crushed when her mother ordered her away that Dóra felt moved for her. She’d always stood silently by and did as she was told for fear she’d catch a scolding or worse when her mother permitted her to join in her work and she couldn’t bear the idea of this lass suffering the same on her account.

Irpa was so pleased that she lunged at Dóra and hugged her. “Oh, thank you! How marvellous, you won’t regret it, you’ll look a _dream_ , I promise, thank you, milady, _thank_ you - ”

“Are you sure?” Dírfa asked, doubtfully. “I’ve half a dozen Masters who would be delighted.”

“I’m sure,” Dóra replied, the first firm opinion she’d voiced all day. “I’d be delighted, in fact. Everyone has to start somewhere.”

The look on Dírfa’s face read, quite clearly, _Not at a royal wedding, they don’t,_ but she stopped arguing the point. “I’ll oversee it,” she said, more to her daughter than to Dóra. “Every stitch.”

An hour and another embrace from Irpa later and Dóra was finally free. She must come back in two weeks for her first fitting and they would be quite grateful if she wore the boots she intended to wear for the ceremony or something very like them. Her head was such a muddle that she hardly remembered anything else that had been said amongst them other than the fact that she’d insisted on a high-necked tunic.

Well, she thought she’d insisted on a high-necked tunic. If it got switched around, perhaps Fundin would be a dear and let her borrow a gorget.

* * *

 

Fundin took more time gathering his courage upon entering the library than he ever did entering the field of battle. Perhaps if he went more often for pleasure, rather than business his feelings would be different, but every time he passed through those huge carved doors, he nearly always had some task to perform which either filled him with nervous apprehension or out and out dread. Today it was the latter.

“She’s not here,” Haldr spoke up sharply behind Fundin who might have been startled if he didn’t have the battle-sense to know when someone was behind him. Or if he wasn’t familiar with Haldr’s frankly creepy habit of sneaking up on library patrons. “I expected her after supper, but it’s long past.”

“I’m not looking for Dóra,” Fundin replied, a little more defensively than the situation called for.

Haldr tilted his head back and regarded his future brother-in-law skeptically. “Well, you’re not here for a book; you can’t read.”

“I can!” Fundin shot back, annoyed.

With a dismissive little wave, Haldr replied, “If you can’t read because of circumstance or you don’t read because of choice, the end result is the same, so why quibble? What are you looking for if not my sister and not a book?”

Fundin was tempted to ask for a book, just to be contrary, but he couldn’t think of a single title off the top of his head and anyway that was not why he was there. To task, he sternly reminded himself.

Squaring his shoulders he informed Haldr, “I’m trying to find your mother, do you know where she is?”

The librarian laughed at that; loudly. Far too loudly for a library, Fundin was sure and he couldn’t see what was so very funny about his question.

“What would you want to see _her_ for?” he asked.

Fundin just blinked at him, uncomprehending. Dóra’s family was famed for wit, his was...decidedly not. It was confusing, therefore, why he should have more of a grasp of basic rules of interpersonal interaction than Haldr. Was it really not obvious why he should want to actually _meet_ his mother-in-law?

After beating his frustrations out in the training yard and having a good long soak afterward, Fundin found himself feel a bit silly. Any dwarf interrupted in the middle of work was bound to be a bit testy and, after all, Dóra left just as she said she would. It wasn’t as if her mother had shackled her to the desk, permitted to rise only to retrieve books for her. He’d overreacted, he was sure.

True, by all accounts, Dómarra had been a tyrant when Dóra was younger, but time and distance could well have mellowed her...somewhat acidic disposition. Granted, when Dóra tried to introduce them she said she had nothing to say to him, but again, she was trying to work. Anyone would get testy when kept too long from their craft.

“We haven’t actually been introduced,” Fundin said at long last, feeling like an idiot as he always did when Haldr asked him a question with an obvious answer.

“So much the better for you,” he said flatly. “If you want my advice, I’d keep it that way as long as possible. You mightn’t be able to avoid her if she attends the wedding, but - ”

 _“If?”_ Fundin asked, incredulously, any temporary optimism he might have entertained about Dómarra’s changeability drying up at once. “She’s here, isn’t she? What do you mean ‘if’?”

Haldr sighed, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. “I don’t think she’s made up her mind. As far as I can tell, at the moment she considers this a research holiday. That she is in Erebor cannot be denied; whether she will also attend your impending nuptials is unclear - ah. There’s the beast now, if you want to face her. Excuse me.”

At that, Haldr hurried away into the stacks, seemingly picking a place at random that he might hide himself away. Fundin turned around and went in pursuit of the dwarrowdam who really could move at quite a speed through the carrels and carts, even laden down with books as she was.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he asked, trying to keep up with her without knocking anything over. “Could I talk to you for a moment?”

Dómarra stopped so suddenly that Fundin almost tripped over her. She peered cooly up at him with the same searching, exasperated expression on her face that he saw so often on Haldr’s.

“What do you _want?”_ she asked, impatiently, hugging her books a little closer to her chest, like a shield.

“Haldr said you mightn’t come to the wedding,” Fundin blurted out, thoughts of introductions and beginning again utterly out of his mind. “Why wouldn’t you? Dóra would - ”

“Halldóra is free to live her life as she pleases, just as I am entitled to be where I would, when I would,” Dómarra interjected. “If she will not heed my advice, why should I heed her requests?”

“You’re her mother!” Fundin said it like an attack, forgetting to keep his voice down. “It’s something you’re _supposed_ to do, even if you don’t like me, at least go along with it for her!”

The dwarrowdam turned away, setting her books on a table and scoffed, “I don’t _like_ you? You give yourself too much credit. I don’t know you. I don’t have an opinion about you. Not personally, at any rate.”

That stopped Fundin’s righteous indignation in its tracks. If Dómarra didn’t take issue with him, then what was it she objected to?

“It is your profession,” she said finally. “Your trade.”

“Blacksmithing?” he asked, confusion writ all over his face. Father _Durin_ was a blacksmith. He thought his trade was above reproach.

“War-making,” she said, her voice impossibly calm and level, though her eyes blazed. “Not that I refuse to acknowledge the necessity of war. I don’t want my daughter married to a warrior.”

Fundin was well and truly stumped. He was a _dwarf_. For that matter, so was Dómarra. So was Halldóra! Carved of stone and made to wield steel in defense of the stone that bore them. Every _child_ knew that. Blacksmithing was what he did; being a warrior was who he was.

“I don’t understand,” he said at last.

The dwarrowdam’s mouth twitched as if she was repressing some snide remark, but the lines smooth and she said nothing at all.

“Could you explain yourself?” Fundin asked when Dómarra only stared up at him with an unreadable expression. “You owe me that, at least.”

“I owe you nothing,” she said, sharply, laying her books and papers out in neat, precise rows. “Neither you, nor my grown daughter.”

It was galling, but there seemed to be nothing more Fundin could do to get answers, aside from, perhaps, giving the lady a good throttling, but he was a gallant, as Dóra said. At least he tried to be; attacking her mother would probably lower him in her estimation. Fundin squared his shoulders and turned on his heel, prepared to march out when Dómarra’s voice stopped him. She spoke very quietly and very rapidly, but he caught every word.

“When the wardrums sound you will answer that call for you are, as I said, a warrior. My daughter is not.” He felt, more than heard her, shake her head, “Despite what the old legends might say there are dwarves enough with strength for quills and ledgers, not arms of steel. She will remain behind. And when you meet your end on the field of battle, she will _remain behind._ For the Maker knows how many centuries, alone. With children, perhaps, but alone nevertheless.”

Dómarra sat down, removing a pen from a silver case and flipping a heavy manuscript open on the desk, but she spoke still, “She has a heart of wax and always has. Impression are quick made and quick set. You’ve made yours and even if law and custom were not against her, there would not be another. I do not yet know if that eventuality is something I can celebrate.”

Fundin almost protested. It was not a foregone conclusion that he would die in the heat of battle, though that was the idle wish of many Guardsmen and women. To go quietly on one’s back was little valued among their people. Most dwarves would rather meet their Maker on their feet. He was young and he was strong and he was not afraid to die. He’d not thought at all about what he might leave behind.

He did not know what to say and so he said nothing. Without a word or a backward glance he left the library and went back to his own rooms, heart heavy and mind reeling, though he wasn’t thinking of Dóra. He was thinking of his own parents.

No one was quite sure what happened to his mother. She died inches from his father, an orcish spear through her chest. She was a Healer, a midwife, but not a stranger to the medicine of the battlefield. Legend had it she was trying to reach Farin, who had taken a mortal blow before she was dealt one herself. Trying to save him, he’d always been told.

Was she? He had no idea. He didn’t know them well enough to begin to guess and he wasn’t about to ask Dísa or Gróin. That would be a fine way to begin a conversation, _I know we don’t talk about Amad and Adad much, but I was just wondering, do you think that she might have gotten herself killed so she wouldn’t have to live without him?_

Morbid, he thought with a shudder. But unlikely? He simply did not know.

Fundin tensed when he saw that his sitting room was not empty, but the tension dissolved instantly upon seeing Dóra, curled up on the couch, fast asleep. Gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘falling asleep’; she looked as if she’d just toppled over, she was still wearing her spectacles and her bootstraps weren’t even loosened.

Crouching down next to her he ran a finger down the length of her nose. It wrinkled charmingly and she rolled over, burying her face in a cushion, impeded slightly by her eyeglasses. Fundin reached out and got one arm under her knees and the other around her back, picking her up despite a sleepy murmur.

“‘Evening,” Dóra mumbled, drowsily.

“‘Evening,” Fundin returned politely, making for the stairs to his bedroom.

“I can walk,” she protested, blinking blearily up at him.

“Sure you can,” he agreed. “But this is faster; I can take the stairs two at a time.”

Dóra smiled and snuggled up to him, her head on his chest, one hand lazily tracing the ties of his tunic. “I accomplished nearly all I set out to do...I’m due in the library…”

“Nah,” he bent his head and kissed her brow, walking right through the open bedroom door and depositing her on his bed. “Haldr said you could have the night free; he says you’ve been working too much.”

“Liar,” she smiled again, sitting up as he started taking her boots off. “Fundin, I can - ”

“Go back to sleep,” he urged her quietly. “I’ve got it.”

But Dóra was at least half-awake and she fumbled with her necklace, bracelets, and rings, dropping them on the bedside table along with her spectacles. She shimmied out of her coat and loosened the ties of her tunic as Fundin made quick work of her socks and trousers, pulling the bedclothes up before her legs could get cold. She rolled onto her side and let him loosen her braids, he did so enjoy playing with her hair.

By the time Fundin crawled in beside her, he thought she’d fallen into a light doze and was content to let her sleep, but she rolled onto him the second she felt the mattress dip beside her, cushioning her head against his shoulder. Fundin drew her close and wriggled down, kissing a line down her brow, her nose, until his lips settled on her mouth.

Dóra smiled and murmured, “You’ll be so proud of me, I got myself something to wear for the wedding.”

“Did you?” he asked, stroking a hand up and down the small span of her back. “What’s it look like?”

“Don’t know yet,” she replied. “It’s maroon and gold.”

“Sounds nice,” he said. Then added, after a pause, “Maroon’s red, eh?”

“Aye, red,” she nodded, laying an arm over his waist. “And I’m almost certain it’ll have a neck.”

Fundin felt like he’d missed something in that sentence, but he really didn’t mind. A sleepy Dóra was a rather adorable Dóra, all things considered. And she looked as if she needed some rest. “Good,” he said simply, drawing the covers up over her shoulders as she snuggled against him. “Ah. I talked to your amad today...Dóra?”

But her breathing had slowed and evened out and he realized she was fast asleep. She looked so peaceful, he felt his own eyelids get heavier as he drifted off beside her. The worries of the day fluttered around in the back of his mind, beating softly against his brain, but they seemed far away when she was so near. Holding his beloved close, he kissed her hair once before he too joined her in slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Tiny insight into Dómarra's mind! Also, for folks who've read my stories set in the Ered Luin, yes, that was a young teen!Mama Ri in the shop and she'll be back.


	24. Chapter Six

The next time Thráin went to the tailor’s his father went with him. It was the most humiliating journey of Thráin’s life, his father held him by the scruff of the neck, like an unruly pup, and marched him through the streets in that firm grip.

“A- _dad,”_ Thráin hissed. “Let go! No one’ll listen to me when I’m King Under the Mountain, you just watch, they’ll think back to today and laugh at my coronation.”

“They’ll think more meanly of a dwarf who can’t admit to his own mistakes than one who needs a bit of coaxing to set things right,” Thrór replied sedately, nodding and smiling at those they passed as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. “This does less damage to your dignity than your Ma’s idea - she was going to fling you over her shoulder and run you back to the shop.”

This alternative vision of his fate effectively silenced Thráin. He didn’t speak another word until they were back at the tailor’s and he stood in front of the dwarrowlass who’d been fitting him for his coat the day he stormed off. 

“What did you want to say to the girl, Thráin?” his father prompted.

Thráin glared at him very briefly. He didn’t _want_ to say anything, he didn’t _want_ to come back, he was being forced to because of the rules that dictated polite conduct. Thráin did not like those rules and planned to abolish them as soon as he was crowned.

But for the moment he was prince, not king and his father was looking at him with an air of expectation.

Looking at the girl’s knees, Thráin mumbled, “I’m sorry about ripping the coat. I’m sorry for disrupting the workings of your craft. I’m sorry for being disagreeable and disrespectful when you were doing what you had been Made to do.”

The words came out a little stiffly, but he’d been well practiced with them; he’d had to write them over and over on a slate the night it happened, once his mother found him and his hand throbbed all night. 

“Apology accepted,” the young lady said graciously. “Now, back on the pedestal, eh? I’ll go quick as I can and then you won’t see hide nor hair of me ‘til the wedding day.”

Thráin bit back a grimace and stood where he was told to stand. Thrór stood by, watching him carefully with his arms folded, just in case he decided to make a break for it once again. But Thráin made sure to mind his manners and he even thanked the girl when the torture was over. 

“That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” Thrór asked, placing an arm around his son’s shoulders now, rather than a hand at the back of his neck. Thráin did not particularly fancy an embrace, but he bore it; his father’s affection pinched less than his displeasure. 

He did not say anything, rather, Thráin let his very displeased expression do all his talking for him. As usual when he was in a bad temper, his father just smiled at him. It only made Thráin frown all the harder. 

“Come now,” Thrór said cheerfully. “It’s just a day, isn’t it? And once it’s over, it’ll be back to business as usual.”

But it would _not_ be back to business as usual. For Dóra and Fundin would be wed and nothing would be the same. Oh, for a while they might pretend, but marriage nearly always meant children or the expectation of children. And then where would he be?

“Where are we doing?” Thráin asked when he realized the path they were treading was not the one to their family’s suite or even the dining hall for an early meal.

His father smiled at him in a secretive way that, as a dwarf of twenty-five, he would have found enormously intriguing. At the ripe old age of fifty-eight, he found his father’s love of surprises annoying and a little anxiety-inducing. 

Luckily, Thrór was a kindly soul who did not keep his son long in suspense. “Workshop,” he replied with a smile. “I’ve a wedding present of my own to work on and I’d like your help with it.”

“Wedding present?” Thráin asked incredulously. “You’re paying for everything! What more do they want?”

Thrór tweaked his nose, “They haven’t _asked_ for this, that’s what makes it a present, my boy.”

“Do I have to get them a present?” Thráin asked, frowning at the prospect. Although he was the son of the King Under the Mountain, he was not allotted the run of the treasury in spending money. As far as Thráin was concerned, his allowance was positively paltry, but his parents wouldn’t budge on the matter. And now he was expected to spend his own money to pay for a present that he didn’t want to give in honor of an event he didn’t want to go to! Was there no _end_ to his torment?

“Well,” his father drew the word out consideringly. “It would be very generous of you if you did…”

Thrór chuckled when his son pulled a face and made a noise that left him in no doubt about how Thráin viewed the prospect of being ‘generous.’ 

“But,” he continued, “if you lend a hand, I suppose we could say my gift comes from both of us - if you pull your weight.”

“Alright,” Thráin agreed readily. It sounded like an altogether wonderful plan, he wouldn’t have to spend his own money - or worse, spend time trying to think of something to purchase that Dóra and Fundin would both like and use.

Thrór grinned at him and ruffled his hair, leaving his son scowling as he opened the door to his private workshop off the main forges. Thráin followed him inside, noting immediately the presence of a golden circlet laid in with rubies and diamonds. It was meant to sit across the brow and around the back of the head and the circlet was joined with hundreds of delicate golden mail loops. 

“That’s nice,” Thráin said approvingly running his hands gently over the diamonds, tracing the pattern they made. “It’s for Dóra? I think it’s too small for Fundin, his head’s enormous.”

Thrór chuckled. “Clever lad - Fundin’s getting a new gorget to match.”

“Match?” Thráin wrinkled his nose. “That’s stupid, they don’t look a thing alike, everyone’ll be able to tell them apart.”

Thrór laughed though, for the life of him, Thráin had no idea what he’d said that was all that funny. They _didn’t_ look alike and trying to make a matched set of them was an exercise in futility. Fundin was big, Dóra was little. Dóra was clever, Fundin was not. Dóra sounded like a penny whistle when she spoke and Fundin sounded like the rumbling of a minecart going down a track. There was no way anyone would ever think they matched, no matter if they wore red and gold from top to toe.

“So Fundin gets a gorget and Dóra gets a cap,” Thráin repeated. “What do you need my help with?”

“Oh, Dóra’s not getting a cap,” Thrór corrected him and that secret, sneaky smile was back. “She’s getting a veil.”

Thráin did not quite understand what was being asked of him until his father sat him down at a table containing coiled gold wire, a pair of scissors, a pair of pliers, and eyeglasses for protection. “Your basic four-in-one,” Thrór explained cheerfully to his son’s fallen face. “I’ve already got it started for you round about the edges of the circlet, just keep on where I left off.”

“But it’s so _tedious!”_ Thráin protested. He never wanted to be a mailer, he wanted to be a weaponsmith. Surely Dóra could get more use out of a dagger than a veil. 

Thrór gave his son what he likely intended to be a bracing pat on the back, but Thráin scowled and shifted away. “It is a bit,” his father admitted. “And she’ll thank you very sincerely for all your hard work.”

The promise of the most gushing, sincere thanks and heartfelt praise were a cold comfort to Thráin’s aching fingers when he was let out of his father’s workshop three hours later. The only thing he consoled himself with was the thought that if he was left half-blind by the permanent impression over his field of vision of dozens of interlocked gold circles, his father would feel _terrible._

But his vision cleared up after two minutes of walking the Mountain’s many streets and the pricking in his fingertips had faded to nearly nothing when he went to Óin’s family’s suite looking for a poultice and some sympathy. Óin was the only one at home, so though he got the poultice, he didn’t get a drop from his cousin’s nearly-dry well of sympathy.

Actually, Thráin thought glumly, ‘well of sympathy’ was a turn of phrase that did not suit his older cousin at _all._ Óin, on his best and brightest days, had what could most accurately be termed a puddle of sympathy. 

“Well, you were the one who was stupid enough to agree to go in on a present with your Da,” he said in an insufferably superior way. “He’s King Under the Mountain! Of _course_ it’s going to be something grand.”

“What’re you getting them?” Thráin asked.

“Hair oil,” Óin smiled. “Useful and all an apprentice can be expected to afford. _You_ made the wrong choice, how much did you get done?”

“Twelve rows,” Thráin replied, scowling. “And I’ve got about a million more to do. I don’t even want to _go_ \- ouch! What was that for?”

Óin poked him hard with his fingernail, right on one of Thráin’s newly developed blisters. “‘Cos I’m tired of you going on about it. You don’t want to go, we all know that, but you’re going anyway because you’re _supposed_ to go. I don’t know why you’re being such an ass about it, I thought you liked them.”

“I do,” Thráin huffed. “That’s the problem.”

Thráin did not have very many friends - to be perfectly honest, he did not think there were very many dwarves who were fond of him. Óin baldly stated many times that if they were not cousins, he’d never cross the street to meet him (punctuated with a smile and a punch on the arm, but it was not a ringing endorsement of his qualities, was it?). Adad and Amad had to like him, they were his parents and that was a requirement of being a parent. Fundin was his uncle, so perhaps he didn’t count either, but Dóra liked him, he thought.

Granted, she was forced to spend some of her time with him for which she was compensated, but she did bring him sweets, which was not a part of her role as tutor. And often they had conversations that had nothing whatsoever to do with Elvish grammar, even before she met Fundin. More to the point, he liked her, quite a lot, actually. But now she was marrying his uncle and they wouldn’t care to have him taking up their time when they had a dwarfling of their own to look after. 

It wasn’t fair, Thráin thought morosely. Two years ago, he’d wanted to wash his hands of them, when they were being ninnies about courting. But in the time that had passed, he’d gotten used to them. Fundin-and-Dóra, almost as if they were a matched set. Fundin-and-Dóra was perfectly alright, but Fundin-and-Dóra-and-Someone-Else was uncharted territory and the unknown made Thrain nervous. With his luck Someone-Else wouldn’t like him either.

Not that he was telling anyone as much. Absolutely not, he’d sound like the world’s biggest baby if he whinged about how his uncle and his not-quite-aunt were going to throw him over in their affections in a few short years. Óin was just about Thráin’s age and he couldn’t be happier about going to the wedding, for reasons he articulated as Thráin sat pouting.

“There’ll be pretty girls from the library to dance with,” he said, as if the prospect was an enticing one. 

“I don’t care about that,” Thráin muttered, rolling his eyes. _Really,_ his cousin did not know him at all if he thought that the idea of _dancing_ would sway his opinion.

Óin cocked his head at Thráin consideringly and removed the poultice so he could more effectively prod at his fingers. “There’ll be pretty boys from the library to dance with?”

“I _hate_ dancing,” Thráin said definitively. It was an absurd practice, really, a great many dwarves all crowded in a hot room bumping into each other. The only time Thráin was ever tempted to join in was after everyone else was too drunk to notice if he made a fool of himself and by that point everyone was so sweaty and the room was so hot that the potential enjoyment was totally negated by the reality of the discomfort. 

Óin decided to try again, “Alright, so you don’t want to dance with anyone. The food’ll be good.”

“The food’s always good,” Thráin let his head fall onto the back of Óin’s parents’ couch. “I don’t know _why_ they need me to be there. There’s going to be hundreds of guests! They won’t even notice whether I’m there or not.”

“So go to the ceremony, stay for the feast, and leave when the dancing starts up,” Óin suggested, giving a roll of his eyes to rival Thráin at his most dramatic. “Honestly, have I got to think of _everything_ round here? And if you’re asked for, I’ll just say you’re using the necessary or that I _just_ saw you and you’re around someplace.”

It sounded like a very good plan to Thráin, but he still eyed Óin suspiciously, “What’ll you want in return?”

“Not a thing,” Óin replied easily. “If you stay all the while, I’m sure you’ll stick to me like pitch and then I won’t be able to dance with a single pretty lass, your frowning’ll scare them all away. Ah! See, that’s just what I’m talking about, your face’d fright the silvering off a looking glass.”

Thráin’s face had arranged itself into a very severe glare, with narrowed blue eyes and drawn-together dark eyebrows. “Thanks,” he said sardonically. “You’re a true friend.”

Óin grinned happily at him and punched Thráin affectionately on the shoulder, “It’s ‘cos you’re kin to me. Otherwise I’d never cross the street to meet you.”

Thráin was in a much better mood when he made the trek to Dóra’s office for his evening lesson. If he was the sort of young dwarf who was inclined to skip (he was not) or whistle (he _absolutely_ was not), there would have been a spring in his step and a tune on his lips. As it was he only walked quickly and looked less displeased with his surroundings than usual. 

Hearing voices just inside the door, Thráin assumed he had arrived early and lingered just outside; it wouldn’t have been the first time Dóra made a mistake with her schedule and staggered appointments right on top of each other. Sliding down the wall, he sat on the floor outside her office and play with the loose threads on the sleeve of his coat. He couldn’t help overhearing the conversation inside.

“ - but I don’t see why you shouldn’t come! It’s why you’re here in the first place, isn’t it?”

That was Dóra, sounding awfully miffed about something. Thráin shifted a little closer to the doorway to hear better.

“I am here,” a cool, even voice sounded, a contrast to Dóra’s strained pleading. “And what I do with myself whilst I am here is entirely my own concern. If I told you not to marry your young man, would you heed me?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Just as I thought.” The voice sounded awfully smug, but not exactly satisfied. “And so you’ll more than understand that when you tell me to come to your wedding, it is not a foregone conclusion that I will agree to your demands.”

“That’s hardly a fair comparison!” Dóra sounded like she was crying and although Thráin found himself in whole-hearted agreement with the mysterious lady who didn’t want Fundin and Dóra to get married, he found he could not bring himself to like someone who made Dóra cry. “For if I give in to your demands or if you refuse to give in to mine, either way, you still get your way!”

“Not entirely. But I can see that this discussion is finished - ”

“It’s _not!_ Is that why you came, just to get my hopes up and turn me down in face to face?” There was sniffling now and Thráin almost ran in to interrupt them, but the cool-voiced lady made his interference unnecessary.

“Stop,” she said and it sounded like a command, as if she actually believed she could command another creature not to be upset. “You’re impossible when you act like this, as you seemed fond of reminding me, you are no longer a child. So cease behaving like one.”

Thráin scooted back on his bum as the door opened. He had a split second of recognizing that the dwarrowdam exiting was Halldóra’s mother and in that second he made a very impulsive decision. Rather than curling his legs up so he was not stepped on, he positioned them right across the threshold and sent the Lady Dómarra sprawling onto the hall carpet.

He did not say that he was sorry for he was not sorry. Dómarra whipped her head around, a venomous look on her face, but she bit her tongue when she saw who it was she had stumbled over. Thráin matched her, glower for glower, as he ran right into Dóra’s office, slamming the door behind him.

Dóra _was_ crying, or she had been until very recently. Her cheeks were splotchy and her nose was red. She had taken her spectacles off and was wiping them furiously on the hem of her tunic. 

“I am sorry, Thráin dear,” she managed in a voice that still quavered a little. “I’m not prepared to have a...do you want to go for a walk?”

“A walk?” Thráin blinked at her. ‘What about my lesson?’ was on the tip of his tongue, but he did not really _want_ an Elvish lesson, after all. And he’d exerted himself so much earlier in the day that a bit of respite wouldn’t go amiss. “Alright. Where are we going?”

“Outside,” Dóra seized his arm and together the two of them left the academics’ wing of the Mountain and ascended higher and higher, stopping at the market for a few minutes so that Dóra could buy them a small sack of candied nuts, half spicy (for her), half sweet (for him) to share.

Thráin’s legs were starting to ache by the time they reached the top of a dizzying set of spiral stairs. He was all set to complain when Dóra pushed a heavy stone door open and a gust of cool twilight air hit his face. They were very near the top of the Mountain, where the moonstones were kept. Already they were starting to glow with a pale white light as the moon rose higher and higher in the sky. 

Dóra took his hand and sat down in the center of the stones, placing the back of treats in front of her. She didn’t move to eat at first, just leaned back on her elbows, face turned up toward the dark blue sky, eyes closed.

Her young companion was hungry from their journey (he hadn’t eaten since the tailor’s) and did not wait for permission before starting in on the nuts. He crunched away in silence for a few minutes, until Dóra sighed and sat up straight, grabbing a handful for herself. 

“I don’t like your amad,” Thráin told her between bites. “I don’t know why you want her going to your st - er. I don’t know why you want her going at all, she doesn’t seem like she’d be much fun.”

Dóra laughed quietly and tucked a strand of hair back into its arrangement with salty fingers. “She’s not. Poor Fundin, he tried talking to her, but he doesn’t know what she’s like. By the Maker, I wish I’d convinced your adad we only needed a few words in an antechamber. This is turning out to be a much larger ordeal than I anticipated.”

“So don’t get married,” Thráin suggested. “Just call the whole thing off. Then you won’t be upset that your amad’s not going to the wedding because there won’t be a wedding to go to.”

The smile Dóra gave Thráin was very sweet and very sad. “Ah, but then I wouldn’t marry Fundin. So that isn’t really an option - besides, the paperwork’s done and your adad’s ordered the food and drink...and you’ve got a coat half-made for you, as I understand.”

“Nearly made,” Thráin confirmed unhappily. 

“Black?”

“Black,” he nodded. “What’re you wearing?”

“Red,” Dóra told him, but it didn’t much matter to Thráin either way - except that a red coat would go well with the rubies in the circlet, which would please his father. If Ada didn’t already know, which Thráin was sure he did. Da was sneaky about things like that. “The clothes are half-made, the feast paid for and the temple staff have been notified. No backing out now - not that I want to back out.”

She took another handful of nuts and chewed thoughtfully for a few minutes. Thráin thought the matter was settled, but apparently not, for Dóra swallowed and clarified, “Not that I _want_ to back out. I want to marry Fundin, that’s never been a question. It’s the wedding I’m not keen on, not when it’s causing so much trouble.”

“But if you don’t want a wedding, I don’t know why you’re cross that your amad doesn’t want to come,” Thráin said. “You said yourself that she isn’t going to be any fun. Why do you want someone at your wedding who isn’t going to be any fun?”

This seemed like a tremendous time to interject, _I’m certainly not going to have any fun or be any fun, therefore, while you’re un-inviting attendees take my name off the list,_ but Dóra started talking again before he could finish. 

“Because she’s my amad,” she shrugged helplessly. “You’d want your own Ama at your wedding, wouldn’t you? In a hypothetical situation wherein you were, in fact, getting married. Which you are not and I know you have no plans to, but as a for-instance, say, you’d want your mother there, wouldn’t you?”

“Well...I suppose,” Thráin admitted, though the idea of his marrying anyone was too ludicrous to seriously contemplate. “But my amad isn’t your amad. In the first place, Ama’s fun. And she likes feasts and dancing and all that. And she’s...I don’t know. She smiles at me. Yours doesn’t smile at you. I know she’s your Ma and all, but I don’t think you ought to worry too much about whether she comes or not. Not if she can’t be arsed to smile at you every once in a while.”

Thráin had no idea what he said. It had either been very good or very bad because Dóra’s face crumpled briefly, as if she was going to cry again, then she _threw_ herself at him. Thráin braced himself as if for an attack, but Dóra only seemed intent on hugging him very tightly. Thráin patted her back a little uncertainly, relieved when she drew back, wiping her eyes, but smiling anyway. 

“You are a very sweet lad,” she said. Thráin was just about to argue that he was _not_ sweet and she seemed to have gotten a very strange impression of him, which was odd since she’d known him for years and ought to have the measure of him by now - but he was struck dumb when she added, “and a very good friend.”

Certain he’d misheard, he asked uncertainly, “Friend?”

“Aye, of course!” she said, nodding. “We’re friends, aren’t we? Or am I too old to be friends with?”

“You’re not too old,” Thráin said and she wasn’t, she was only eighty-four, but the idea still struck him as odd. Was he friends with Dóra? Had they been friends all this time and he hadn’t noticed? More to the point: if they _were_ friends, could he still scarper off on her wedding?  
“Friends,” he nodded, going in for another handful of nuts. “Sure...er...Dóra...could I ask you…?”

“Anything you’d like,” she nodded, flashing him a quick grin. 

Thráin smiled back somewhat faintly. It was said old warriors knew the outcome of a battle even before it had begun. There was a prickle of dreadful understanding at the back of his mind that made him think he was already defeated. “Er...do you like rubies alright? I just wondered. No particular reason. For asking. At all.”


	25. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** References to **pre-marital sex** (though they ARE engaged and nothing is described).

This situation was absolutely impossible to Fundin. Impossible because he was a dwarf of action and there was _nothing_ he could do to fix it, short of binding and gagging Dómarra to _force_ her to attend the wedding.

That plan was bound to fail on two points, as Loni was only too eager to tell him when he mentioned it in passing. Point the first - kidnapping was very much illegal, even for the King’s brother-in-law. Point the second - seeing her mother tied to a pillar was probably going to do nothing to raise Dóra’s flagging spirits. The fact that such extreme measures were necessary to ensure Dómarra’s presence would likely only depress her.

“If she won’t come, she won’t come,” Loni said as they left the forge behind. “I say good riddance, she sounds like the sorriest excuse for a dwarf as I’ve ever heard of.Anyway, if I have my way, you’ll both of you be kept so well-plied with mead, you won’t know who’s there! I don’t know why Dóra’s letting it affect her so much.”

“It’s her _mother,”_ Fundin explained, as if it should be obvious. “What if you were the one getting married and your Ma didn’t want to - ”

Everything else he’d been about to say was silenced by Loni’s chapped red hand closing firmly over his mouth. 

“Shh!” Loni hissed. “Ever since she got word that you and Dóra were going to get bled together she’s been dropping hints the size of an oliphaunt that mayhap I ought to find a nice lass. You mention my Ma and ‘marriage’ in the same breath and she’s liable to come round the corner with some poor unfortunate girl she’s snagged along the way.”

Fundin shook Loni off and gave him a disgruntled look. “Well, the point stands.”

“No it doesn’t,” Loni replied, wagging a finger. “For my mother’s the most blessed ‘dam who ever walked these sacred halls. There isn’t a _chance_ she’d give it a miss. Not a chance. She’s Made of gold and silver while it seems poor Dóra got saddled with dross and tin.”

“She’s still her mother,” Fundin maintained stubbornly. Loni shrugged at that and changed the topic to a less touchy subject; now that the weather was warmer out of doors, the horse races would be starting up again and he had it in his head to make his fortune on a grey dappled filly, but Fundin was only half-listening as he spoke, still puzzling over the Dómarra situation.

Truth he told, he’d rather she didn’t come. She was sour, terse to the point of rudeness and despite what she said, she clearly didn’t like him at all, she barely seemed to like Dóra. Her dire predictions seemed, in this peaceful season, almost absurd. Husbands went off to war and died, aye, but their wives survived him. Add to that he hadn’t really _known_ his mother. She was a battlefield surgeon. It made more sense to believe the common tales that were told about her death, that she’d died doing her duty, ministering to the wounded who could not be taken to the Healers’ tents. Much more likely than throwing herself in the pathway of an Orcish spear once she saw his father fall. He slept better at night when he thought of it that way, anyway.

Despite Loni’s opinion, Fundin was sure that it was only natural to want one’s parents at one’s wedding. He’d want his, if he had that chance. His had been laid within the stone even before Gróin and Maeva wed, but surely - _surely_ \- there would have been no question of their coming.

Yet even as he sought to reassure himself, Dísa’s words of a fortnight ago came back to him, striking him just as oddly now as they did then. _Not everyone gets on with their parents, you know._

They didn’t _talk_ about things, his family. Obviously they talked to each other, they squabbled, they laughed with (and at) one another, but they didn’t have long conversations about difficult subjects. Fundin remembered when he was a lad, Gróin taking him and telling him, haltingly, that their parents weren’t returning from the wars.

He hadn’t said they died, not in so many words and Fundin was so young he hadn’t understood. He thought they’d just...not come back. By choice. Maybe over the far-distant sea. At the time, he thought it must be because his siblings were all grown up and didn’t need them anymore and that they must have forgotten about him. It wasn’t until the funeral, when he saw their carven effigies that he realized they hadn’t gone anywhere, really, but he kept that revelation to himself. He thought his brother and sister would think he was silly for making such a mistake.

As for the rest of his growing up, his parents were rarely mentioned except anecdotally. In passing, stories that his brother and sister would tell occasionally which they figured into. Sometimes his father’s old brothers-at-arms would comment that he looked like him, for all he had his mother’s coloring. Fundin supposed there was a resemblance, but looking at his parents’ old portraits didn’t tell him a thing about what they were like. Everyone always looked either stern or bored in portraits, he thought. 

Well, except for Dísa, who just looked vicious. Thrór joked that they ought to hang their most recent formal portraits outside the Gate as a warning to any who might wish ill upon their homeland, _Here be dragonslayers._

Had she been talking about herself when she said some dwarves didn’t get along with their parents? For all her bluster, there weren’t many dwarves she didn’t get on with, not that Fundin knew of. She had friends aplenty among the Guard and though she didn’t have much patience for some of the council members who seemed to think, like the scribes, they got a penny per letter that made up their words, she got on with them all the same.

The only creatures Fundin knew of who had his sister’s expressed loathing were Orcs, Goblins, Dragons, and Lord Grór of the Iron Hills. Surely her own parents hadn’t been included among that rogue’s gallery. But he still wondered.

The opportunity to have his questions answered came sooner than he might have expected. After supper that night, she asked if he mightn’t like to join her down the archery ranges, testing some cranequin crossbows before the order was given to mass produce the devices for the Guard and, maybe in fifty or a seventy-five years hence, sale abroad.

As usual when it came to practice with ranged weaponry, Dísa made far better use of them than he did. When an arrow ricocheted off the ceiling and almost stuck Fundin in his own foot, she called a halt. 

“The crank draws the bow too taut,” she said by way of assessment. “Also your aim’s shite.”

“I’d rather a longbow,” Fundin grumbled, handing the cranequin back to her. He leaned against the wall and watched as she packed them back in the straw-filled crates they’d come in. “‘Least I’ve got control over when the arrow’s released. Aren’t these meant to be easier? Just point it at the target and give it a go?”

Dísa rolled her eyes, “You never _just_ ‘point it at the target,’ rocks-for-brains, you’ve got to _feel_ it.”

“All I feel is a new blister,” Fundin replied, checking his forefinger over for damage. Dísa cuffed him on the back of the head, laughing. 

“Poor wee bairn,” she tutted. “You whinge more than Thráin.”

Fundin pretended to look appalled at that comment - and honestly, it wasn’t difficult. “Not possible. No one’s a louder or more determined whinger than Thráin. Anyway, even if I was, you ought to thank me for it, good practice.”

“The lad’s nearly sixty,” she observed, greatly amused. “I’ve all the practice with his fits I’ll ever need, so thanks for the help, but I’ll have to terminate your contract.”

“Can’t,” Fundin smirked cheekily. “‘Fraid you’re stuck with me.”

“Only for a bit over a month,” Dísa grinned, drawing him against her in a headlock and grinding her knuckles on his scalp until he was whinging like Thráin in earnest. “Then you’re Dóra’s problem ‘til the world’s Made new. And good riddance to you.”

“It’s alright,” Fundin choked once she let him up for air. The hand that wasn’t occupied rubbing his throat patted his sister tenderly on the arm. “No need to hide it. I know you’re just covering up hurt feelings. Thrór told me, you’ve been crying yourself to sleep every night thinking how you’ll miss me. Oh, aye, miss me something terrible - even though I’m not going anywhere. Or changing house.”

“So why bother getting married, then?” Dísa asked, recapturing his head with her arm again when his face fell, only rather than abusing his scalp, she kissed him instead. “Nah, I don’t mean that. The pair of you ought to be married, if that’s what you want. Even Gróin’s come round to the idea at long last - with a bit of prodding from Maeva. So the stars are right again and you’re the favored child, as it should be.”

“Favored child?” Fundin asked, rubbing his neck down since _sometimes_ his sister wasn’t mindful of her strength. “Was I before? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Ha!” she let out a great guffaw and almost dropped the crossbow she was packing away. “Hadn’t noticed, he says. Ama used to say you were her gift from the Maker, a reward for all the trouble and vexation I’d put her through for sixty-five years.” 

“You didn’t get along with yo - ” Fundin had to stop himself, had to recollect that he and Dísa had the _same_ mother. The moment sprang up so quickly that he just plowed on ahead, not wanting to miss the chance to have a conversation he’d been wanting for weeks. “With - ”

“Not at all,” she said simply, replacing the lid and driving the nails she’d pried out earlier back into the wood with the tips of her fingers. “Nah, we never...not since I was little. Not even then, she was always annoyed about some little thing or other. Two different sorts, we were.”

“Not hewn from the same rock?” Fundin ventured tentatively and Dísa snorted, shaking her head. 

“Not even the same range,” she replied with a grimace. “Eh. Happens, sometimes. The Maker fashions disjointed parts and puts ‘em in the same family. Look at me and Gróin. Now, _he_ and Ama got on, they were alike enough, she just wasn’t so bad-tempered. But both of them were smart. Both of them were Healers. If brains were flint, I’d not have enough to strike a spark and I can break a bone easier than setting one.”

Fundin tactfully did _not_ reply that he thought his sister and brother were more alike than they would ever admit. Both overprotective, overbearing sorts, in their own way. Privately, he thought that the reason they were so often at loggerheads was because they found in each other qualities to despise that they each possessed in abundance. When you got two dwarves with quick-lighting tempers in the same room together, was it any surprise that they’d spark a flame sooner or later?

“But you were Made for warfare,” Fundin offered with a furrowed brow. “Same as Da and she _married_ him.”

“Aye, so she did,” Dísa nodded. “But it’s one thing to choose a warrior to take on and another to have one thrust at you. Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons...the way I see it, there’s dwarves who think, if they have children, they’re just setting lead in their own mould. And the end result’ll be another one of them and of course it doesn’t work that way.”

Fundin found he had to agree. Thráin wasn’t a _thing_ like his mother or his father. He had none of Thrór’s easy-going nature or his sister’s indomitable will. But neither of his parents scorned him for it; on the contrary, they took him as he was. 

“Do you think…” he began, but lost the thought and started again. “Do you think…”

Fundin trailed off and Dísa stopped working to look at him expectantly. “What?”

“D’you think that’s why Dómarra’s so down on Dóra?” he asked in a rush. “She wanted her to be one way and she came out another? No, don’t answer that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t make any _sense,”_ Fundin replied, frustration seeping into his tone. “Dóra and her Ma are both scholars - and Dóra’s _brilliant._

Dísa shrugged. “Could be there’s something we don’t know. Or could be that Dómarra’s opinion of Dóra doesn’t have a thing to do with Dóra at all. Or she’s just misery given form and breath. I don’t live in her damn head - not that I’d want to, seems a rotten place to be.”

“I just…” Fundin heaved a sigh and knocked his head back against the wall. “I just want to do something about it.”

“Well, you can’t,” his sister said immediately, grabbing his tunic and pulling him away from the stone. As far as she was concerned, the only thing under the Mountain that was allowed to knock sense into her brother was her. “So get that thought out of your head, it won’t do you any good - nor Dóra neither. They’ve either got to come to an understanding on their own or drop it. It’s not your business.”

Maybe _this_ was why their family never indulged in long, personal conversations. They knew each other too well; Fundin suspected that Dísa would tell him it wasn’t his business to meddle. Not that fear of being a meddler stopped her when she felt like ambling into someone else’s business. Or Gróin, in yet another display of similarity. 

“Well, how do you do it, then?” he asked, refraining from giving his head another bracing knock. He didn’t see why his sister didn’t like it when he did, helped clear his thoughts.

“Do what?”

“With...with Thráin,” he said a little hesitantly. Because she had to be disappointed in him from time to time. Thráin who avoided company when he could, Thráin who lied to get himself out of trouble when he was old enough to know that was the coward’s way out. Sullen, waspish, silent Thráin. Yet she laughed at him and called him a little bear like she was nearly always fond of him. “Weren’t you ever disappointed?”

Dísa stared at Fundin for a long, long time, an unreadable look upon her face. He was sure she was going to tell him that the way she felt about her son was something else that wasn’t any of his business, but she did not. 

“I get disappointed with the way he acts,” she said finally. “Sometimes. With the things he does. But not with _him_. Little nipper tries his hardest, you know. And he’s not a bad sort, he has his troubles like anyone else. But then, I didn’t want children, so I didn’t think much on what I wanted him to be like before I had him. Could be that was for the best.”

“But Thrór wanted children,” he pressed, still trying to understand. 

Unexpectedly, his sister laughed. “Aye, always did. And he wanted ‘em so fierce he’d have loved a wee lad or lass whether they were the boldest, best warrior the old rock had seen or they were born with pointed ears and a love for the trees. Thráin suits him just fine and if you ask me, he’s the best sort of father that lad could have. He can get a smile out of him any day, has done ever since he was born.”

Fundin mulled that over. If Dóra’s troubles with her mother ran as deeply as his sister guessed, then there really wasn’t anything he could do about it. He couldn’t control Dómarra’s thoughts or opinions, after all, he wasn’t some ensnaring drake. If she and her daughter weren’t...suited, nothing he said or did could change that. And it just wasn’t _fair_.

“She doesn’t like me,” Fundin noted sourly.

“Pick up a crate,” Dísa ordered as she grabbed two and carried them, one under each arm. “Sore sorry to hear that, but not everyone will - we’re back to talking about Dóra’s Ma, eh? Just to be clear.”

Fundin could tell from her tone that she was genuinely asking and he nodded. “Aye, it’s as you said about Ama. She doesn’t like warriors.”

“Here now,” Dísa corrected him. “You weren’t listening. Ama liked warriors well enough. She didn’t like _me_ being a warrior. There’s a difference there.”

He didn’t see how, but let the subject drop for the moment. “So, you’re saying I should do nothing?” he asked as they made their way to the workshop where the bows were to be left when they were done. “That’s not like you.”

“I’m not saying you should just lie in bed all day,” Dísa grunted, nearly losing her hold on one of the crates, but recovering almost immediately. “But don’t make yourself sick over it. I don’t know...go for a ride or take Dóra for a walk to Dale or something, get her mind off it.”

That was the usually the end result of asking his sister for advice. Dísa believed in nothing so much as the restorative powers of fresh air and fast horses. If scaling the Mountain was not feasible, then taking a run around the perimeter would probably do the trick. Of course, Dóra ran around the Mountain all day long and putting her on horseback when he was trying to calm her down would have the exact opposite effect of the one he desired. 

“Well, going riding would taking her mind off it,” Fundin replied diplomatically. Once the crates were returned, he bid his sister good night and made his way back to his own quarters. Dóra was already there, curled up on the couch in a robe with a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold at her elbow. His wife-to-be found nothing as rejuvenating as a few minutes - or hours - with a book, so he really was not surprised.

“Burning the midnight oil?” he asked, leaning over the back of the chair to kiss her cheek. 

Dóra smiled and said, “Sort of.” Her eyes sparked and she replied in a half-whisper, “I’m reading for _pleasure.”_

Fundin clasped a hand over his heart sinking down on one knee behind her to read over his shoulder. “The one about the merchant with five daughters?”

“No, this is the one about the scholar who goes to tutor the illegitimate daughter of the Stiffbeard lord who tries to marry her, but can’t because he’s got a mad wife in the dungeons who keeps trying to set fire to everything,” Dóra paused and added, “It’s...actually, it’s just as absurd as it sounds. But I like it. How’d the crossbows come out?”

“Eh, could have been better,” Fundin said, resting his chin on the back of the couch. “They were alright in the hands of a masterwielder, which means they’re too dangerous to hand out to the Guard yet. Dísa’s got it well in hand, I was just there to provide a contrast to her skill.”

Dóra tsked and lay her book aside, “I’m sure that’s not true. You sell yourself short.”

“It’s the only time anyone could use the word ‘short’ to describe me,” he observed ironically. “I like the novelty. Are you coming to bed? Or reading a bit?”

“I can read in bed,” Dóra said, then smiled at him a little wickedly. “But I don’t much feel like it tonight.”

Fundin stood up and cocked his head down at Dóra curiously. “Just going to sleep?”

“Eventually,” she smiled, then got up in a rush, pulling her tunic over her head in one swift motion. “Race you!”

She had faster strides, but his longer legs meant that it shouldn’t have been much of a contest, but Fundin slowed himself down, shedding clothes as he went. The bed was made of stone, so it wasn’t any worry when Fundin pounced on top of Dóra who managed to get herself not only appropriately naked, but into bed. They’d managed a bit of practice in the two years since their first go-round and had managed to eliminate the awkward fumbling of their first encounter.

Well. Most of the awkward fumbling.

“Ouch, Fundin, you’re lying on my hair,” Dóra complained, poking him in the arm until he half rolled over so she could free her tresses from captivity.

“You never braid it before bed,” he said when he settled back down and pulled her close to lie flush against him. “Not that I mind.”

“Sometimes I think you’re marrying me for my hair,” Dóra mumbled into his chest, eyes half closed, but there was a little smile playing around her mouth. “What’ll you do when I’m old and grey?”

Fundin chortled ruefully. “I won’t have room to comment.” Tugging at his own beard, he added, “I’m sure I spied a silver hair the other day and Gróin was going to grey just after Óin was born and he wasn’t any older than I am - younger, I think.”

“I’m sure it was a trick of the light,” Dóra patted the mat of still-black hair on his chest fondly. “Anyway, I won’t mind. A bit of silvering will only increase your value.”

“Ah, see, there it is,” he smiled. “You give a very fine compliment - and I love that over and above your hair.”

“What a good thing,” she commented idly, “that we’re getting married since we’re so very fond of one another.”

Something changed in Dóra’s tone, it didn’t darken exactly, but Fundin thought he detected a note of melancholy and that concerned him. Despite his sister’s advice, Dóra simply wasn’t the sort of dwarf to find herself distracted from her troubles by a bit of exercise. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, shaking her shoulder a little because he didn’t want her to fall asleep in a bad mood. 

Dóra looked up at him, a frown playing around her lips, “Let’s just get married without having a wedding. Can we do that?”

“Probably,” Fundin speculated. “If Thrór wouldn’t have us executed for treason. Don’t worry about a thing, I’ve got a grand plan for getting through the blessed event.”

“Have you?” Dóra asked, smiling despite herself. “What is it?”

“We’re both of us going to get drunk,” Fundin informed her. “Very drunk. And stay that way ‘til it’s over. That’s the plan.”

For a moment there was silence. Then Dóra’s shoulders started to shake. And finally she let out an enormous snort of mirth, clapping her hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles, though there wasn’t anyone about to hear them.

“Oh, you _are_ clever,” she remarked approvingly, scooting up so she could kiss him properly. “That’s why I’m marrying you, you know.”

“Because I like to drink?” Fundin asked teasingly.

“Nah,” Dóra settled back down and closed her eyes to sleep. “I love you for your mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dóra's non-academic tastes run toward dwarrow!Austen and Bronte, but I'm not sure I can blame her. Good taste in books, good taste in dudes ;)


	26. Chapter Eight

Halldóra’s final dress fitting before The Day found herself and Irpa alone behind one of the privacy screens in the shop. Irpa’s mother was off assisting another, which meant Dóra could slouch a tiny bit without being reprimanded. She was certain that Dírfa meant well - or, at least, she meant for the clothing to appear at its best advantage - but her presence made her a trifle nervous. Irpa was much easier to talk to, though she shared her mother’s penchant for straightforward speech.

“Are you the sort who can’t eat anything when you’re nervous?” Irpa asked, eyeing Dóra’s waistline contemplatively, tossing a pincushion from hand to hand. “Or who’s constantly nibbling on summat? That’ll decide how tightly I’ll be nipping you in.”

Dóra was about to protest that she was sure she would be perfectly sanguine throughout the day, but that would be a lie, so she swallowed it. Nerves aside, when she was busy, she often forgot to eat at _all,_ which didn’t bode well for spending a half an hour in a stuffy, candlelit room reciting vows.

“If it’s a wee bit loose, it’ll remind me to eat,” Dóra told the lass. “So leave a bit of room.”

Irpa nodded and bent to do just that, chattering all the while. “Are you excited? Is your lad excited? Are you _both_ excited?”

“Excited for it to be over,” Dóra murmured. Off of Ipra’s astonished look she added, “I’m excited to be _married_ , of course. Only neither of us likes a fuss. And there’s been an awful lot of fuss.”

She was thinking, of course, on her mother’s possible refusal to attend - it wasn’t definite yet, but Dóra perceived no softening of her heart on the matter since she cried at her. Since then, she avoided speaking on the matter at all when she met her mother, confining their conversations  
to safe topics, like her mother’s work and the quality of the food in the dining hall. She made no further effort to convince her mother to approve of her marriage and Dómarra acted as if it wasn’t happening at all. It was a truce, of a sort, even if it was an uneasy one.

But Irpa seemed to think that Dóra’s mind was on the festivities themselves. The lassie shot her a very disbelieving look and shook her head.

“I’d like a bit of fuss,” she said dreamily. “I want the grandest, prettiest gown you’ve ever seen and cakes. Strawberry cakes with vanilla cream. I’d want my fingernails painted pink too. Ama says dwarves with red hair oughtn’t wear red themselves, but anyway my hair isn’t _really_ red and pink isn’t _really_ red either and it will be my wedding and she’ll have to do exactly what I want. Oh! And I’d want pheasants. To eat, I mean, not just walking around.”

Dóra laughed, “Well, it sounds as if you have the occasion well in hand. You just need to find yourself a lad.”

“Aye, but there’s no rush,” Irpa replied. “Since I know exactly what’ll be done on the day, I can take my time picking a lad to wed. I want him to be _perfect.”_

Irpa was a curious mixture of practical and romantic, one that Dóra found very amusing. She really oughtn’t be a flesh and blood girl at all, but the heroine of some grand tale, she was sure. “I’m sure he will be, whoever he is. At least, perfect for you and that’s all that matters.”

“No, he’ll be all over perfect,” she countered, shaking her head though her hands were steady, mindful not to poke Dóra with the pins. “Handsome, of course. I know, I know, it’s what you’re Made of that really counts, not the form you take, but still a missus has got to wake up beside her mister day in and day out, you want someone with a face that you _want_ to look at of a morning, don’t you?”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Dóra agreed, biting back a smile so she didn’t seem patronising. Irpa was so very young, despite her skill with a needle. Granted, Dóra was not all that much older, but she liked to think she had at least a thimbleful of wisdom to her name. “But if you _really_ like someone, I’m sure their face will be dearer to you than anything. Why - ”

“No, I’m quite settled on the fact,” Irpa said in a determined voice. “He’s got to have dark hair - black is preferable, but I could live with brown, so long as it’s not _too_ brown. And light eyes - green, I think I’d like green eyes best. Not too tall, I don’t want a fellow who towers over me like a great big tree - no offense, of course - and stout, sturdily built, broad in the shoulders. He has to make me laugh and I’d like an honest, hard-working fellow, but not deadly serious, that wouldn’t do at all. And a good dancer since I love a dance and wouldn’t want a husband who just sits in the corner like a boulder. And no freckles.”

“Alright,” Dóra nodded once Irpa paused to take a breath and pin a particularly tricky seam. “Any musical preferences?”

“Of course!” she mumbled around a mouthful of pins. “I’ll take a fiddler _or_ a drummer. Not a piper, can you imagine that at all hours in close quarters? A lyrist or a harpist wouldn’t be _too_ bad, I suppose, but I’d rather he play the fiddle. What does your Fundin play? Or does he?”

“He does...play,” Dóra acknowledged with a small smile. Fundin made no secret of the fact that he was not particularly musical, neither a singer nor much of a musician. He said he hadn’t any need to exert himself at either enterprise since she did well enough for both of them. “Drumming. But not very much.”

“Hmm,” Irpa hummed. There seemed to be a great deal behind that hum, deep thoughts, or at least speculative evaluations. Dóra chanced the girl’s wrath far enough to poke at her with the toe of her boot.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” she said, looking up, all wide-eyed innocence. Then she shifted to her knees on the ground and fussed with the hem of the coat’s long skirts. _“Well…_ I was just wondering what you do of an evening. If he doesn’t play any music and you’re not one for sparring.”

“We talk,” Dóra replied, ignoring Irpa’s raised eyebrows. She got plenty of that from the other scholars who always seemed shocked that she and Fundin had anything to say to one another, as if guardsmen could speak of nothing but their weapons and kills and she could tolerate hearing nothing but opinions on history and literature. “And...sometimes we don’t talk, sometimes we just enjoy being together without much in the way of conversation. Or occupation.”

 _“Oh!”_ Irpa explained, rocking back on her heels and looking up at Dóra with an expression that seemed a touch too arch and knowing for such a young face. “Of course! Of course you’d do that, you _are_ to be married, after all.”

“Not just that!” Dóra blurted out, feeling a bit of flame come to her cheeks. She bent a little and gave Irpa a light swat on the nose for being cheeky. “Mercy me, aren’t you a wee bit young for that kind of talk?”

“My mother makes wedding clothes,” Irpa replied in such a tone that it was abundantly clear she thought _Dóra_ was the one who was speaking out of turn. “I know all about _that_ sort of thing. There’s only two reasons dwarves get married after all, for duty or for passion - you and Fundin are _in_ love, aren’t you? Really in love? Not like the King and Queen.”

The conversation had taken quite a bizarre turn and Dóra would have ended it right then and there but for the fact that she was still pinned into her coat and Irpa could and would stab her with her needles if she tried to cut their time together short.

“Take it from me, the King and Queen love each other very much,” Dóra said firmly. Honestly, she was of the opinion that they were Made for one another. “Where’d you get such a notion as that?”

“My mother,” Irpa said promptly, lowering her voice to ensure that they weren’t overheard. “She says that the Queen had to marry the King, otherwise Lord Grór would be given the reign of Erebor because _he_ was more likely to have an heir. King Thrór was a hundred years old already when his father died and he hadn’t made any mention of getting wed to anyone. Ama thinks he was counting on his brothers for that sort of thing, but then Prince Frór died and Prince Grór left for the East and got his own kingdom.”

It was not a new sort of story, but Dóra was taken aback to hear Irpa speak of the matter to her so openly, so casually, as if she was simply trading the news of the day and not bandying rumors about on the sly. Dóra had been a child herself when the King and Queen wed, grieving her father, but even she knew it had been no grand affair. In fact, it had been one of the only subjects her mother would speak on that wasn’t her scholarly work at the dinner table. She thought it was an act of desperation on Thrór’s part, marrying a warrior maid who’d long ago pledged herself to her duty on the battlefield. More than that, she thought it was selfish of him. Thought it put the whole kingdom at risk. She thought that he’d never get a child off her.

Dóra took a deep breath and held it for a count of five. Before she’d met Fundin, she felt uncomfortable when people made such comments about the King and Queen - out of duty, perhaps and after all, they _had_ a child, so she didn’t see why everyone should keep on fussing. But now they were family to her, or as good as family and she didn’t like hearing them so meanly thought of, especially for something that wasn’t true.

“The King and Queen,” she began, a little haltingly since she wasn’t sure it was her place to speak of them behind their backs either. Yet on she plowed. “The King and Queen are very well suited, love each other very much and are...happy as they are.”

Irpa shrugged, “But not passionate. Ama did Queen Sigdís’s wedding clothes, she said she had a look like she was off to the gallows every time she came in. There wasn’t even a feast!”

“Those were lean years,” Dóra recalled, but did not appear to make any headway with her argument.

“Could be it’s different for Kings and Queens,” Irpa continued, blithely unaware that she was being argued with. “But my mother says - and I agree! - folks shouldn’t marry when there’s not passion. Doesn’t yours say the same?”

“Mine doesn’t say anything either way,” Dóra said shortly. “And neither should we - hasn’t your amad told you it’s impolite to talk about folks behind their backs?”

“Only if they’re near enough to hear,” Irpa shrugged. “But that’s alright since you and your lad have passion, don’t you? You must if you don’t have anything else in common. You’re having a _proper_ wedding, after all.”

Dóra counted to ten this time, a thousand tart responses pushed up against her teeth and she swallowed them all back, reminding herself that Irpa was little more than a child and susceptible to picking up all kinds of queer notions from their parents. Notions that they themselves only half-understood or misinterpreted entirely.

 _You of all dwarves should know that,_ Dóra reflected to herself ruefully. _What might you have said about the King and Queen when you were fifty and only had your amad and tutors for company?_

“Irpa, dear,” Dóra said and the appellation made her seamstress look up, giving her client full attention. “The...grandeur of a wedding doesn’t really have much to do with what the _marriage_ is going to be like. If it were up to Fundin and I, we’d be happy with a short ceremony and a toast. A bit like the King and Queen had, really.”

“But you’re not,” Irpa replied, fussing with the hem one final time, making sure the garment lay smoothly and evenly. “You’re having a grand event, everyone who’s anyone’s invited.”

“That’s true,” Dóra nodded. “Since Th - we want a good party. For the guests to enjoy. The wedding’s for the guests, it’s the marriage that’s for us. Do you understand?”

The girl was quiet for a while, a contemplatively look coming over her face. “I think so,” she replied slowly. “But...I _still_ want a great big party when I get married. And a nice dress. And a perfect husband. That’s not a bad thing, is it?”

“No,” Dóra smiled. “Not at all.”

Once she was peeled out of her new coat and tunic and dressed in her own clothes, Dóra reflected on the conversation she’d just had as she tottered back to work. _The wedding’s for the guests. The marriage is for us._

She wasn’t sure what made her say that, it was a pithy little observation, like someone might find in a book of quotations for use when embroidering a tapestry and they wanted to look clever. She was nearly ashamed of having said it; her mother would never have approved of her giving voice to so trite a thought.

But that was the crux, wasn’t it? What her mother liked and didn’t like, what she did and didn’t approve of. Although Dómarra had gone East, Dóra had not shaken off her influence, not entirely. She was always there, a voice in her head, telling her what she was doing wrong, making her feel guilty for actions Dóra took that she had no way of knowing about. Making her feel guilty for doing things that made her happy.

Yet even as she thought on that, she realized that it wasn’t true. It might be her mother’s voice she heard in her head, but those were _her_ thoughts.

 _You were supposed to be_ better _than this._

Those words had fallen from her mother’s own lips over a fortnight ago. Better. She was supposed to be better than she was, to satisfy her mother. But her mother lived miles away in the Iron Hills. She’d washed her hands of Dóra when she was Irpa’s age. Irpa, who absorbed her own mother’s ideas and words because she lived with her, because her mother was a constant and ever-present influence. Dómarra hadn’t been. Not for years.

Halldóra found herself standing before the office her mother had claimed as her own for her visit. She knocked once, for politeness’s sake, but opened the door when she found it unlocked and barged in regardless of what answer her mother gave. She hadn’t been listening for it.

“If you wanted me to heed you more closely, you ought to have fought harder to keep me,” she said as she stepped inside, closing the door behind her and keeping one hand on the knob.

The scratching of her mother’s quill was interrupted as Dómarra raised her head from the paper. There was a spray of ink across her nose and a few locks of hair had fallen free from around her brow. She didn’t look as stern as she ordinarily did, Dóra took her by surprise. The widening of her eyes cleared her brow, she looked years younger. It gave Dóra a bit of courage.

“What?” Dómarra asked, quill poised above the paper, dripping ink everywhere. “What did you say?”

“When you left,” Dóra continued, her voice steady as the rock. “After...after Adad died.”

“You are mistaking your dates,” Dómarra tsked with some of her usual vinegar back in her voice. “I remained in Erebor for twenty years after your father died. What _is_ the point of this?”

“Aye, but when you left, you _left,”_ she continued, undeterred in the face of her mother’s dismissal. “And I stayed. And you didn’t care.”

Dómarra’s lips puckered and she actually lay her quill down as she regarded her daughter with a keen eye. “I believe I asked you to come with me. Several times. I was quite adamant about it.”

“You were quite adamant that I was a fool,” Dóra replied. “That I was making a mistake. That I would regret it if I stayed. And I don’t. Not a bit. That - that was the first decision I ever made all on my own and I don’t regret a moment of it. Just as I don’t regret Fundin now. And I don’t...I don’t care if you come to the wedding or not. I’d like you to come, but - ”

“That would seem to be a contradiction,” her mother pointed out, but there was no hint of victory in her voice as there ordinarily was when she corrected her daughter. On the contrary, she seemed almost wary.

“I’d like you to come, but I don’t care if you don’t,” Dóra maintained. “I mean, it won’t ruin anything. And it certainly won’t make me change my mind. I love Fundin and we’re going to be very happy together. If you could be happy for us, that would be...preferable. But it is not necessary.”

“How fortunate,” her mother replied coldly, picking up her pen again. “For I will never be happy for you, not on your present course.”

She said it so matter-of-factly, she might have been commenting on the air quality in the archives. Dóra took a deep breath. Held it. Exhaled when she had to breathe and nodded slowly.

“Very well,” she replied softly. “I’ll leave you to your work, then.”

“Thank you,” Dómarra replied curtly, lowering her head to the paper. It was only after her daughter left that she lay down her pen, picked up the sheaf of paper she had been writing on and threw it into the fire; the shaking of her hand spattered the ink so much that it was useless.

Outside the door, Dóra took one deep, bracing breath, then another.

 _Don’t cry,_ she thought to herself as she walked slowly to her own office. _Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t -_

 _“There’s_ the lovely bride. What a sight for sore eyes!”

Sága stood before her, taking her by both shoulders and smiling down at her. “It’s been an age, my girl, what have you been up to?”

Slowly, Dóra’s eyes rose to Sága’s lovely, dark, careworn face, the warm smile, the glint of her monocle. Her lip trembled for one moment. And then she burst into tears.

Swiftly, Sága put an arm around her shoulders and tucked her head against there. “There, there, dearie. Tea, I think. It’s long past time that you and I shared a pot of tea.”

* * *

 

Halldóra absolutely hated tea, it was, in her opinion, nothing more than hot water that was putting on airs. Whenever she was a guest in another’s home, when it was polite to do so, she demurred offers of tea and took coffee whenever she could. Sága was the exception. Not that her mentor brewed it any differently or made it more welcome to her palate, no it was just as tasteless and watery as anyone else’s, but it was an effective cure for a wee bout of crying. It was hard to cry when one was trying not to gag.

Also there was usually a plate of buttery biscuits to accompany the beverage that was its own sort of distraction. Dóra had eaten two by the time she found her voice.

“It’s all just a touch overwhelming,” she said as Sága added a generous drizzle of honey to her cup. She must have looked particularly wretched since another drizzle followed the first. “Just...a lot of fuss. I don’t like fuss.”

“Of course not,” Sága replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re a player in a grand theatrical of the King’s own design.”

“And I didn’t mind that,” Dóra replied, accepting the cup and gulping down enough to wash the biscuits down. “I still don’t because it meant I didn’t have to make any decisions. I don’t _care_ about the wedding! I don’t and it sounds awful to say and it doesn’t make sense because I _do_ want to be married to Fundin. I wish I could go to sleep the night before and wake up the next night when it’s over and done with.”

Sága took a contemplative sip of her own tea and made a considering face, “I’m afraid that would affect the legality of the proceedings, if you were wed whilst in a state wherein you could not consent.”

“I’ll just tie a sign around my neck, **I, the undersigned Halldóra Halthórul do consent, in the presence of legal witnesses, to become espoused to the undersigned Fundin Farinul.** He can put the knife in my hand and prick his own finger.”

“How will you drink the wine?” Sága asked in a calm, reasonable way.

“He can just tip the cup into my mouth. You can prop me up,” Dóra almost smiled. “If a bit dribbles down, the worst of it’ll end up in my beard. Or if it drips on my coat, it won’t matter. It’s red.”

“I’m sure you’ll look just lovely,” Sága said. “And you’ll look lovelier still if you keep both eyes open. Sounds to me like you’ve come down with a wee bout of jitters. I’m sure you’ll be just fine on the day.”

Dóra nibbled on another biscuit, “I suppose.”

It was such a short answer from such a long-winded ‘dam that Sága knew at once that it was not the elaborate ceremony or grand feast planned afterward that was foremost on her pupil’s mind. “What else is troubling you?”

“Ama’s not - ” Dóra took another mouthful of tea before she finished the sentence. “Ama’s not coming. She’s told me I’m ruining my life. That she won’t be a party to it. That she can’t be happy for me - ”

“She’s not _coming?”_

A drop of tea sloshed over the rim of Sága’s cup and disappeared into the dark woolen fabric of her coat. The normally placid scribe looked shaken. “She said she wasn’t coming?”

“She said she wasn’t sure,” Dóra clarified. “And that whether she came or not was her decision and she wouldn’t go just...just for my sake.”

Sága had either been rendered speechless by that comment or she suddenly found herself with a mighty thirst for tea. She drained her cup and poured herself another. She was halfway through the second cup before she found her voice again.

“How sad for her,” she said at last. “For it promises to be a splendid affair. Splendid. And I am very much looking forward to it. How’s your lad?”

Talking about Fundin was a surefire way to brighten Dóra’s spirits. Her red-rimmed eyes lit up as she chattered about his less than successful evening testing crossbows with his sister. They moved on from there to a discussion of their own work in the scriptorium and by the time Dóra gave Sága a departing hug and thanks for the refreshment, she was looking and feeling a good bit better.

Sága watched her proceed to the scriptorium, noting that she slowed, just slightly, outside her mother’s office, but quickened her pace almost at once as she strode past. The scribe gave the door a long, contemplative look before she walked briskly to the door and gave the knocker three sharp raps.

Dómarra was not too long in coming, but it was clear from the look of exasperation on her face that she was not pleased by the interruption. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure where to begin,” Sága replied coolly. They were contemporaries, colleagues, once she would have called them friends, but as she looked down at the scholar, she felt nothing but contempt. The inkstains on her face and the unkempt locks of hair made her look very like Halldóra, but to Sága’s eyes, the similarities only brought home to her how very different the two were in temperament.

Stupidity was not among Dómarra’s less laudable attributes and she gleaned the purpose of Sága’s visit at once. “If you’ve come to speak to me about my daughter’s wedding, I’ve had just about enough intervention from Halldóra herself, from her brother, from her betrothed - ”

“And now from me,” Sága interrupted smoothy, covering her fury with a front of deceptive calm. “You’re being ridiculous - ”

 _“I?”_ she asked, appalled. “I am not the one who is carelessly signing her property, livelihood and very _life_ to an idiot guardsman!”

“He’s terribly kind and they’re very well-suited,” Sága replied, her voice steady as ever though her eyes were blazing. “Which you would know if you bothered to inquire after more than Halldóra’s work.”

“I do not _care_ about anything other than her work.”

“That’s a lie,” Sága retorted at once. “If it was not, you would not make her wring her heart out over the question of you coming to her wedding.”

“Is she?” Dómarra laughed cynically. “Odd. Not two hours ago she told me she didn’t care whether or not I came to her wedding. Which of us is the liar?”

“Just because she’s not going to allow you to ruin the day for her, does not mean she wouldn’t rather have you there,” Sága replied, reflecting that there was a reason her father wanted her to go in for law, but though she was skilled at debate, she did not relish arguing with the unreasonable. “You’re her mother and she wants you there.”

“You’re quite a bore, you know,” Dómarra said, folding her arms over her chest and giving Sága a once-familiar challenging look. “Telling me what I may and may not do to my own child, as you have ever done - despite the fact that you neither have, nor desire any children of your own. Theorizing in advance of facts is poor scholarship.”

“She’s not a manuscript,” Sága snapped, losing some of her calm demeanor. “She is your daughter. Would Hallthór have put up such a fuss? Even if he didn’t like her choice of husband?”

It was as if a door closed behind Dómarra’s eyes. They lost all their challenge and she swung the door closed, but not before saying, “He is dead. What he would or would not have done is irrelevant.”

Sága was left facing the doorknocker once again. She maintained the outward appearance of total control until she locked herself back in her own office. Once inside she picked up an empty inkbottle and threw it with considerable force into the fireplace, watching the thousands of sharp shards glitter amid the flames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Freaking Dómarra. At least Dóra got cookies out of all this mess. Apologies for the lack of Fundin, but he'll be back next installment!


	27. Chapter Nine

The final legalities were wrapped up the day before the ceremony, as was traditional. Dóra and Fundin read over the marriage contract and their solicitors quibbled over a few points in the fine print - Fundin would not have claim to the intellectual rights of any works, treatises, or manuscripts produced by his wife after their marriage, however he would be the recipient of any funds the publication of the aforementioned works incurred, as would any subsequent offspring; likewise, while Halldóra was not entitled to the personal receipt of funds derived from Fundin’s smithwork, she was entitled to collect funds allocated to his pension, should he be killed in execution of his duty, as would any subsequent offspring.

Fundin’s eyes had begun to glaze over after the opening paragraph was read and, as they were both of noble houses and there were matters of legacies, entailments, and inheritance to consider, it was quite a hefty document. More than once Dóra kicked him under the table when article this or section that required his signature. Gróin was witnessing for him and Haldr for Dóra as heads of their respective households (Haldr positioned himself behind Dóra’s chair and used the back of her head as cover for the small book he was leafing through when the proceedings got too dull; Dóra pinched him on the leg when she needed his attention).

“And finally,” Gílla’s husband Tafr said, speaking quickly for he sensed that both his and his colleague’s clients had enough of property listings, itemized lists of taxable goods and particulars of estate to last them a lifetime, “the undersigned Halldóra Hallthóul is herein and forevermore to be legally of the house of Fundin, son of Farin, being espoused to him on - ah, not that one.”

Tafr put out a hand to stay Dóra’s fingers which were already itching to grab a quill. “Save it ‘til you’re under the canopy, it’s the last signature we need and it has to be witnessed by a juzrâl.”

“Right,” she colored slightly and gave Tafr a chagrined smile. “I forgot.”

Sigga, dwarrowdam who had drawn up Fundin’s legal work, smiled indulgently. “Champing at the bit to get it done, eh? I shouldn’t wonder, you’re quick aren’t you? My wife’s in the Mountain Guard, she says she can hardly see your quills when you take notes, you write so fast!”

Dóra smiled again, a little self-consciously, for she wasn’t sure what to say. Haldr was using the back of her head as a bookrest, so she couldn’t move much without giving him away - she didn’t want to put Fundin through all of the legal talk _again_ if it was discovered that one of the witnesses wasn’t doing his job. 

Luckily, Sigga didn’t seem to notice, caught up as she was in reminiscing. “We’ve known Dísa for an age and Fundin nearly as long. Marriage, eh? Our eldest was married seven years ago, but then, he’s got twenty years over the both of you and we _still_ thought he was too young.”

“Hmph,” Gróin grumbled. “You might’ve mentioned your concerns before you went to the trouble of drawing up the entire contract.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk,” Sigga scoffed, batting Gróin playfully on his arm. “How old were you when you were married, a dignified eighty? Oh, no, beg pardon, you were all of eighty- _five._  
Your sister thought you’d lost your senses.”

“Perhaps I had,” Gróin glowered, but neither of the solicitors paid him any mind.

“My wife’s known Dóra since she was a wee thing as well,” Tafr interjected, sprinkling pounce on the still-wet ink. Do you remember when you came with us to Dale? We’d only just been married then and weren’t all that used to spending so much time on our own together, I was happy to have you.”

“I remember,” Dóra replied with a weak smile. The room where they were conferencing was beginning to feel a mite clustered and the spine of Haldr’s book was boring into the back of her skull.

“So, what do you think?” Tafr asked Haldr. 

“What about?” he asked, not looking up from the pages. 

“About your sister marrying.”

Haldr closed the book and slipped it into the pocket of his book, pushing his spectacles up his nose with an air of annoyance. “Oh, I don’t think much of it at all. In fact, I think the whole lot of you are mad to have undertaken it at all. Marriage. No time to get anything done, if you ask me, which you have and I’ve answered. Is all concluded, then?”

“Aye, all concluded,” Tafr grinned, knowing well how antsy Haldr could get when he was away from the library for too long. “The books miss you, I’m sure.”

“The apprentices, rather,” Haldr drawled, smiling a crooked smile. “If I don’t hear their screams of terror and moans of agony every hour, on the hour, I can’t help feeling that I’m missing out on something.”

He strode to the door, but turned at the last minute, letting his gaze linger on Gróin for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Don’t let that one too close to the contract, if you want it unsullied. His appetite for vandalism knows no limit.”

“It was _one_ book!” Gróin balked, but Haldr slammed the door the next second and was gone. Gróin followed shortly thereafter, muttering under his breath, about, “that bloody lunatic.”

“It’s only you who’s joining Fundin’s family,” Sigga added sympathetically, patting Dóra on the shoulder as she rolled the contract for safekeeping. “Which is for the best, I think.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Fundin spoke up for the first time since they sat down together. “Their going at each other takes some of the fuss off of us.”

Sigga tweaked his nose as if he was still the little dwarfling she’d first been acquainted with all those years ago, “Save your stamina, then - tomorrow shall be nothing but fuss and I for one am looking forward to it.” 

“Have you noticed,” Dóra commented when she and Fundin were released and walking the roadways together, “how everyone who’s keenest on the wedding is already married? Are we going to be this keen on weddings the day after tomorrow?”

“I have,” Fundin nodded. “Could be they’re so chuffed because it’s not them having to stand up there. They just get to eat and drink and enjoy the music. We’ve got to recite vows.”

“Aye, we have,” Dóra nodded. “In front of...everyone.”

“You get up in front of everyone at court,” Fundin pointed out. Dóra favored him with an ironic smile.

“But can anyone see me over the edge of the desk?” she asked.

“A bit,” Fundin replied. “Ever since Thrór got you that cushion - that vexed me, the day we met. I was trying to get a second look at your face, but couldn’t manage it.”

“I couldn’t see your face at all,” Dóra remembered. “Not beneath your helm, but I was sure you’d be handsome.”

“What a disappointment for you, then,” Fundin teased and she gave him a playful smack on the arm.

They walked along in silence, eschewing the crowded streets for quieter pathways that lead them to a gallery overlooking a small courtyard of crystal, brilliantly colored and still slowly growing. Without a word, they stopped, leaning against the golden rail, staring down at the blue and green glow of the rocks. It was below, half a year ago on a quiet evening that they decided to be wed. 

“What’d you suppose, eh?” Fundin asked, snaking an arm around Dóra’s shoulders. She shifted closer to him and leaned her head against his chest. “Do you think it’ll be different? Once we’re married.”

“I don’t know,” she replied after a thoughtful pause. “I hope not. I’m quite happy as we are, but I suppose it will be different. I can’t imagine _how,_ though.”

“As far as I can see, we’ll start pestering the younglings about when they’re to be wed and how to go about it,” Fundin said and Dóra didn’t have to look up to know that he was smiling.

“Aye,” she laughed. “We’ll be at poor Óin to find himself a sweetheart - or Thráin. Can you imagine?”

“No,” Fundin said flatly, shuddering slightly at the idea of Thráin plighting his troth at some poor, unsuspecting soul. Future of the monarchy aside, he doubted his nephew was the type to set his heart on anyone. Probably for the best, he could be beastly when he was a little fellow and denied something he liked. The proposal would probably consist of one of his favorite bargaining techniques as a child, ‘I’m going to marry you. And if you say you won’t, I shall hold my breath until you agree.’ Once his sister let him go on until he passed out in a heap on the rug.

Dóra craned her neck and smiled up at Fundin, “There’s still time to run off.”

“Aye,” he agreed, bending to kiss her. “But if we don’t turn up at supper, we’ll be missed. We won’t have any time at all to make haste before we’re caught...’less you’re willing to mount a horse…”

Dóra’s shudder told him that she’d never agree to that particular plan, so they went ahead to supper. 

They were dining privately in Thrór and Dísa’s rooms. Traditionally, the groom’s parents’ would host the couple the night before the wedding, as a way of welcoming the bride into the bosom of their family. Oftentimes, the bride’s own relations would come for supper, but Haldr had already informed Dóra (before she was technically invited) that he was unavailable for the evening. She knew better by now than to ask her mother along. 

Sága might have come, she reflected as Fundin gave the door a perfunctory knock before letting himself in. As a stand-in, if nothing else, but Dóra hadn’t asked. After blubbing into her teacups, she was loathe to take up too much of her mentor’s time with wedding nonsense. 

Not that she needed an ally, she reflected as Thrór swept her up in a welcoming hug before she’d gotten both feet over the threshold. This was no by-gone age where princesses were taken from range to range for marriages to far-flung lords they’d never met. Thrór and Dísa were as good as family already.

“Roast boar tonight,” Thrór told her proudly. “And Dísa killed it herself, so you know the creature came to a clean end. Ah, there’s some of it now.”

He pointed and winked at a dark brown spot in the shape of a bootprint; clearly she hadn’t been careful about getting the blood off her shoes once the taks was done. Dóra smiled and looked around; she hadn’t heard Dísa’s voice which was odd, for it had a tendency to carry. 

“And where’s she now? One boar is quite enough for five, I think.”

“Five?” Thrór asked, disbelieving. “It’s just you?”

“Just me,” Dóra shrugged. 

“I told you that,” Fundin said, confused in the face of Thrór’s surprise.

“I know you did, but I didn’t believe you.” Thrór wrapped Dóra up in a hug again, kissing the top of her head for good measure. “Well, after tomorrow you’re ours, lassie. In law, anyway - I quite decided you would be a very worthy sister when you laughed at poor Ryce.”

“Oh, so this was pre-arranged?” Dóra asked, biting back a grin. 

Fundin smothered a smile as well, “Hate to tell you like this, but aye. Never much liked the look of you, but orders are orders.”

Thrór snorted at both of them and threw his hands up in mock exasperation, “Ha! Orders, he says! If you listened to half of what I suggested - ”

“They’d be half deaf from being trailed by minstrels and blind from having flowers bunged in their eyes.” Dísa emerged from an upstairs room, dressed informally, but unbloodied. Of course, the hunt would have been conducted days ago, but it was not unusual for the Queen Under the Mountain to scrub dried blood from under her fingernails of an evening. Clearly she’d made an effort with her appearance since tonight was special. “Dóra, Thráin wants a word - speaking of _deaf_ , I don’t know where the lad’s head’s been at the last week, shut up in his room.”

“Last week?” Fundin asked, raising his eyebrows. “I could’ve sworn that’s been going on for at _least_ fifty years…”

Dóra rolled her eyes at Fundin and shook her head mutely. Poor Thráin, the lad got it from all sides. Leaving brother and sister to debate just how much of Thráin’s behavior could be more accurately described as ‘hermit-like,’ as opposed to simply ‘rude,’ Dóra mounted the staircase and knocked on the door of Thráin’s bedroom. She waited until she heard a definite, “Come in,” before she tried the handle.

Dóra had been in Thráin’s bedroom a few times, when there were books or scrolls for lessons he had forgotten and she followed him to retrieve them to ensure that he wasn’t distracted on the way back. It was fairly dark most of the time, he kept the lamps dim, but the room was spotlessly clean. He quite put Halldóra’s office to shame. 

There was a place for everything, from his books, to his weapons. There was a workbench that contained neatly placed tools and shelves’ worth of half-completed crafts were lined up beside the bench, each accompanied by a scrap of paper detailing what he was working on, what was left to complete, and when he ought to have it done by.

Thráin was standing beside the desk, twisting his hands behind his back a little uncomfortably, every inch the nervous dwarfling who she’d met almost five years ago, brought to her office door by his teachers who felt his Elvish was not polished enough for the crown prince. He’d been a little smaller than her back then, but he’d topped her in height in the intervening years and broadened out a bit in the shoulders. It was behind those shoulders that she caught a glimmer of gold, but Thráin shifted when he saw her eyes wander. 

“Right, I don’t want a scene,” he said, cautiously, as if Dóra was a figure of unknown, but plausible threat. “I didn’t do all the hard work either, just the tedious bit, but Da was going to make it more than it is because he always does, but I said I’d just do it myself, in private because…Imadeyouapresentfortheweddinghereitis.”

Dóra was still parsing out the garbled sentence when Thráin stepped back, revealing a beautiful veil of golden mail, hung from a ruby and diamond-crusted circlet. The interlocking chains were so small and so delicate that they seemed to flow more like water than like metal. 

When Dóra turned tearful eyes on Thráin, he backed away slowly, hands raised. 

“I just did the boring bits!” he cried, but it was all for naught. His tutor pounced and caught him around the waist in an embrace, rising up on her toes to kiss his cheek.

“It’s _beautiful!”_ she exclaimed.

“I didn’t do the beautiful parts, that was Da,” Thráin groaned, trying to wriggle away, to no avail.

“Thank you _so_ much!”

“It’s Da you ought to be - oh, don’t kiss me _again - ”_

“Once more,” Dóra insisted, leaving one more smacking kiss on his cheek before she let him go. 

Thráin scowled and wiped his face, but once she backed away a few paces, he smiled a little wryly. “Could be it won’t fit. Could be your head’s full of so much knowledge it’s too big for it.”

Punching him on the arm, Dóra crossed to the bench, lifting the veil and laying the circlet atop her head. Naturally, it was a perfect fit. 

“May I come in now?” a voice containing a trace of merriment asked, just outside the door. “And receive my thanks?”

Thrór bore the hugs and kisses with better face than his son. While Dóra was thanking her king over and over again for the generous, incredible gift fashioned by his own hands, he sneaked out the door and down the stairs. Before he entered the family dining room, he found himself a nice, quiet corner and took a deep breath in, letting it out in one long sigh. That was one job done, just the wedding to get through. Thráin firmly planned on holding Óin to his promise to make excuses for him once he sneaked away.

Once he’d composed himself, Thráin went in for supper, finding his mother and his uncle already eating - typical, they never waited for anyone before they started in on a meal. 

“How’d it go over?” Dísa asked, tossing him a roll. 

Thráin pulled a face, “She kissed me.”

Dísa grinned, “Well done, lad. Let’s hope your uncle has as much luck on the morrow, eh?”

Fundin paused mid-chew and swallowed with a bit of difficulty. “Tomorrow. It’s tomorrow.”

“At long last!” Thrór chimed it, taking a seat at the table next to his wife. Dóra slipped into the unoccupied chair next to Fundin and nibbled at her supper, picking pieces of flesh from the bone with her fingertips. 

His wife snorted, “Right. Long last. After two years.”

“Two very long years,” Thrór insisted. Dísa rolled her eyes and kicked him under the table, but she was smiling all the while. 

Thráin rolled his eyes as well and spoke with his mouth full, “What was your wedding like, then? It must’ve been something.”

His parents exchanged a glance, then, as one, each took a large portion of boar and chewed it unusually thoroughly before they swallowed and spoke.

“It was short,” Dísa grunted.

“Quiet,” Thrór added. “Just signing papers and down to Temple with us.”

Thráin looked confused. “What about the feast? The music? How long did it go on?”

“There was a toast at supper,” Fundin supplied. 

“Aye, there was,” Dóra nodded. “I remember.”

Thráin sat back his his chair, outrage all over his face. “Why, that’s...that’s…”

His parents waited patiently for him to come up with words adequate to describe his rage. Dóra and Fundin moved their mugs of ale closer to the center of the table, just in case he decided to make some grand gesture and sent them to the floor.

“That’s not fair!” he exclaimed at last. “Giving yourselves a sensible wedding and saving all the...all the…”

“Hub-bub?” Dóra offered, peeling the flesh off a potato. 

_“Madness,”_ Thráin snarled. “For them!”

Thrór and Dísa looked at one another for a long moment, then turned slow, diabolical grins on their son and heir. 

“We’re tyrants of the worst order,” Dísa declared. 

“Aye,” Thrór agreed. “We’re throwing them the finest fete as has been seen under this rock in over a century - two centuries! And there’s not a thing you can do about it, everything’s been paid for and set in readiness. Any attempts to sabotage the festivities will be seen as an act of rebellion and rebels will be remanded to the darkest dungeons, where the festivities will continue ‘cos, as I’ve mentioned, they’ve been paid for.”

“Well, we’d never dream of incurring the wrath of the crown,” Dóra said smoothly, ever the peacemaker. “Anyway, as you’ve said, it’s been a long time coming.”

“I still don’t think it’s fair,” Thráin grumbled, going back to his supper again.

“Don’t you worry,” Fundin reached across the table and patted his shoulder. “Dóra and I’ll be just as keen to see your wedding done in style when you decide it’s time to take a spouse.”

Thráin choked on his supper. “NEVER!” he shouted vehemently. “Not ‘til the end of all days! I’m worn out from _their_ wedding and it hasn’t even happened yet!”

“Tomorrow it’ll all be done,” Fundin assured him.

“Or begun,” Dóra pointed out. 

Fundin smiled at her and squeezed her hand. “That too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WEDDING! WEDDING WEDDING WEDDING WEDDING! COMING UP NEXT I'M SO EXCITED!


	28. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Bold text** indicates that Khuzdul is being spoken, also Khuzdul Word of the Day - "mizùl" means "good luck" and "Âkminrûk zu," means, "Thank you," courtesy of the dwarrow-scholar.

It was not, strictly-speaking, traditional for dwarven spouses-to-be to be kept in seclusion from one another prior to the wedding, but circumstances often led to that being the case. There were simply too many dwarves to account for, too many seamstresses, tailors, hair-dressers, and jewelers to fit in one room without chaos ensuing. In Fundin and Halldóra’s case, the chaos was only barely contained as it was.

Dóra had tried, honestly, to limit her use of dressers on the day; as she’d been endlessly stating since they’d handed the reins of the production over to Thrór, she didn’t like a lot of fuss. But it was her wedding day and if there ever a time to cause some fuss, it was then.

She was awakened far earlier than she intended to rise by an apologetic servant pulling back the curtains round her bed and saying that Mistress Dírfa was come with her daughter and her clothes.

“Already?” Dóra asked, feeling around on the bedside table.

The serving maid didn’t get the chance to answer. With a knock on the door, Dírfa announced herself and swept in, tsking when she found Dóra still abed.

“Come, come!” she said, pulling the coverlet right off her as if she was Dóra’s mother and concerned about her daughter feigning illness to miss a day in the school room. “There’s never as much time as you think before a wedding!”

Dóra’s own mother was gone. She crept by the doorway of Dómarra’s bedroom and found it ajar, the room empty. She’d been gone so long the bed was already made and the carpet brushed. Dóra wondered if she’d even gone to bed at all the night before, she might still be down in the library, working on her research. It was not outside the realm of possibility that she’d forgotten the day entirely.

Irpa drew an arm through Dóra’s and grinned broadly down at her, “Aren’t you excited? I’m terribly excited, so I suppose you must be!”

“I need coffee,” Dóra squinted through her spectacles, then drew them off to clean as her bleary vision didn’t seem to want to clear up at all.

Haldr walked by, seemingly out of nowhere, and shoved a steaming hot mug in her hands.

“Thank you,” Dóra mumbled, a little belatedly for he disappeared into his room slamming the door and locking it behind him in case her dressers had any funny ideas about turning their attentions on him once they were through with her.

Dóra replaced her spectacles and took a sip from her mug without a care for scalding her tongue. The risk was well worth the reward.

“That’ll brighten you up a bit,” Irpa said optimistically. “Are you - oh, are you wearing your spectacles, then?”

“Er...I intended to,” Dóra said uncertainly. “They’re gold. They match.”

Irpa squinted at her for a moment, opened her mouth as if to make a retort, then closed it again.

“Hmm,” she hummed. “Well, we’ll see. Go on then, we’ve already had a bath drawn for you.”

 _Just how long have you been in my house?_   Dóra wondered, but knew immediately that the answer would probably horrify her so she refrained from asking. Instead, she padded off toward the bathroom where there was indeed a steaming hot tub of water, laced with a pleasant-smelling fragrance. Some sort of flower, Dóra was sure, but she could not for the life of her identify which one.

Shucking off her things, she left them puddled on the floor and sank down into the enveloping warmth of the tub. Ah, that was more like it. The closed door blocked out whatever hustling and bustling Irpa and her mother were up to and Dóra very nearly forgot the dread of the day as she washed and oiled her hair and beard. Whyever had the tradition developed of performing marriages in temples when it was baths that were eminently more suitable for smoothing frayed nerves?

Probably because bathrooms were too small to hold legions of relations, friends, and well-wishers. The little room felt suddenly crowded when Dírfa burst in on her abruptly and Dóra displaced a quarter of the water from the tub onto the floor when she jumped in surprise. She was so _certain_ that she had locked that door -

Dírfa looked down on her with a steely eye. “Come come!” she tsked. “This isn’t a day for lounging, there’s _work_ to be done. Out you get!”

As Dóra scooted herself out of the tub and found herself enveloped in a huge, fluffly towel, her limbs rubbed vigorously as if she was a piece of flesh in the tannery, she sent up a silent prayer to the Maker that Fundin was faring better than she.

* * *

 

“Ouch!” Fundin cringed as what felt like a huge chunk of hair was ripped from his scalp.

“Oh, hush,” the hairdresser smiled looking for all the world as if he wasn’t the biggest sadist Fundin had ever seen outside a goblin battle. “Honestly, you warriors are all the same. You’ll take a spear to the chest with nary a whimper, but when it comes to getting your hair combed and set, it’s all whimpering and keening.”

“You’re _pulling,”_ Fundin groused. Gróin shot him a sharp look from where he was also having his hair tended.

“Right, that settles it,” he said, fingers kneading his trousers in a convulsive, nervous gesture. “He’s a whinging little dwarfling after all, he’s not competent to be married - ouch!”

“Sorry!” the dresser’s apprentice apologized, dropping her hands from Gróin’s hair immediately.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Maeva reassured the lass sweetly. “It’s a nest, I tell him he ought to have it tended professionally, but does he listen?”

Maeva’s hair was plaited and shone deeply red in the torchlight. She smiled and closed her eyes, letting an attendant carefully apply lacquer to her nails, a bronze that complimented her beard, which was being simultaneously plaited and woven with chains of sapphires. Hanging beside her, a long closed-front robe of dark blue, the bodice set with gems, waited to be put on over her high-necked lace, she looked contented as a lamb in clover. “I can’t imagine _where_ Fundin came by his - ”

“Oh, hush,” Gróin said sourly. He’d made the mistake of putting his overcoat on first and the stiffness of the never-worn fabric made him feel claustrophobic. Or perhaps that was the steady march of time he felt, giving him the sensation that the walls were closing in on him. How was it that he was attending his brother’s wedding day? It was only days ago, it seemed, that Fundin was running around the Mountain with a wooden sword in soft boots.

“Ey, let me see that,” Fundin said when the hairdresser made to clean his comb of snarled hair caught among the tines. “That’s not - _damn it!”_

“What’s wrong now?” Gróin asked, instinctively trying to rise, but prevented from doing so by the apprentice’s grip on the back of his head.

“Too young to be married,” Fundin muttered bitterly. “I’m going grey!”

“Happens to the best of us,” Thrór said, striding in with a huge smile on his face. He looked fresh as a polished penny, groomed and dressed and positively radiating happiness. Crossing to Fundin, he peered down at the top of his head and said, “I’m sure it’s just a stray strand...or two...ah. Well, nothing to get fussed about, lad, I’m sure Dóra never gets much chance to look at the top of your head and by the time she notices, it’ll be binding!”

Fundin did not seem cheered by Thrór’s counsel. He groaned and rubbed at his eyes, muttering to the dresser, “Just hide it as best you can, I don’t mind so long as Dóra doesn’t see.”

* * *

 

“But I can’t _see_ without my eyeglasses!” Dóra said plaintively to Dírfa who was standing over her armed with a kohl pencil.

“Well that doesn’t much matter, does it?” Dírfa huffed. “It’s _you_ who needs to be seen, not you who needs to see! That fiance of yours can hardly be missed by any who isn’t blind!”

She would have batted Dírfa’s pencil away, but she resisted the urge for she’d ruin the decorations on her hands if she did. In deference to the customs of her father’s mother’s Stonefoot heritage, the barely-visible lines of her Master’s tattoos had been painstakingly traced with a paste that would temporarily darken the ink on the back of her hands. Though the markings glowed silver in the light of the crescent moon, miles underground they would be invisible and Dóra agreed with the notion that her accomplishments as a scribe ought to be on display; after all, Fundin would be wearing his finest battle dress.

Once her hands were through being painted, her fingernails were lacquered gold and they were still drying.

“I’ll put them on directly after the ceremony,” Dóra vowed and Dírfa smiled smugly, tucking the spectacles away in an inner coat pocket.

“I’ll keep them safe for you,” she said. “Close your eyes.”

Dóra obliged and sat back quite peaceably until she startled at the feel of hands on her bare feet and she jumped, causing Dírfa to smear the kohl across the bridge of her nose.

“What are you doing?” Dóra asked the ‘dam who’d applied the lacquer to her fingers and seemed determined to start in on her toes for some absurd reason. “No one’s even going to see those!”

“Your husband will,” she replied cheerfully, gently removing excess lacquer from her little brush. It was red, not gold. “Trust me, lass, I’ve been at this longer than you’ve been drawing breath, I know what I’m about.”

“But - ” Dóra had no chance to voice her objections, Dírfa smeared a wet handkerchief over Dóra’s face and brow and told her not to move a _muscle_ , not even if the room caught fire. Swallowing nervously, Dóra sat back, held herself still, and obeyed.

 _I’m glad Fundin doesn’t have to go it alone,_ she thought. Dóra was feeling rather outnumbered and having all this attention on her at once. She rather felt as if she ought to be reciting poetry or explaining some scholastic treatise to make it worth their while. She consoled herself with the thought that Fundin, at least, had his family to divide the attendants’ attention.

* * *

 

“GET BACK HERE!” Dísa roared at her son. Thráin was on the cusp of adolescence, growing into lankiness, but his mother snatched him up as if he was nothing more than a badly-behaved house cat. Which it must be said, given the scowl on his face and the bristling of his unkempt beard, he rather resembled.

Depositing the lad in a heap on the floor she ordered him, “Go get dressed.”

 _“You_ go get dressed,” Thráin shot back, too irate to be concerned that his mother was about to unleash fury all over his bottom. “It’s ages yet! I’ll suffocate in that coat!”

“It’ll be too good for you!” Dísa grumbled, bending down and hauling him over her shoulder, deftly avoiding flailing limbs as she did so. “I’ll sit on you, if I must - ”

“Ah, but I’ll have to sit on _you_ and then the lad _will_ suffocate, poor thing,” Thrór tutted. Some of his happy aura from earlier in the day had abated. Though he daily suffered the burden of running a kingdom, on certain occasions he was happy for the reprieve; organizing the well-being of an entire people was child’s play compared to trying to get his wife and son to look their best. “Dísa, put him down.”

With a low growl, she did so, flipping the lad over so he landed on his feet. No sooner had Thráin steadied himself than he took off running, but his father was too quick for him, grasping him round about the shoulders and dragging him over to his mother again. Thrór did not release him, instead he wrapped his free hand firmly around his wife’s wrist and dragged the both of them off to get polished up.

“Look!” he cried brightly, as if there was something in the sitting room to be excited about. “New boots!”

It was immediately apparent that Thráin inherited his scowl from his mother. “I’ve got boots, I’ve no need of a new pair.”

“Your boots smell of horses - from sole to fur,” Thrór informed her matter-of-factly. “I’ll not have you stinking up the wedding.”

Thráin actually laughed and Thrór took that as his cue to frogmarch the lad into a chair so that his hair and beard could be tamed. Dísa wasn’t so easily moved.

“Go on, then, there’s not as much time as you think,” Thrór said, signalling to the seniormost hairdresser that the time to prove his mettle had come. Luckily he’d had many dealings with the royal family and approached with nary a whimper or a shudder; the Queen respected a dwarf who didn’t show fear.

“Where’s Fundin?” Dísa asked, sitting down stiffly and tensing as her hair was unbraided and combed.

“Worrying over a looking glass, I shouldn’t wonder,” Thrór rolled his eyes. “Lad found a silver strand and it’s ruined his whole day.”

“He just found one _today?”_ Dísa asked skeptically. “Would it help if I told him they’ve been sprouting up for the last five year?”

A groan from the direction of the washroom told her that it would not help, but that it was too late to take the words back.

“Five years?” Fundin asked, his voice painted with the blackest shade of melancholy. His deeply scarlet coat, trimmed with a golden band about the collar and skirt was very becoming on him, but his anguished expression ruined the whole thing. “Five _years?”_

“Longer,” Thráin added helpfully. “I remember counting them when I used to ride on your back. What? You’ve only known Dóra the past three years and she’s never said a thing about it. She’d not be marrying you if she didn’t like the idea of having a husband who looks old enough to be her grandfather.”

“Thráin!” Dísa and Thrór exclaimed at once. Their son only smiled sweetly; he couldn’t be punished now. They’d spent so long trying to get him to cooperate that they’d not take him away as he was having his hair brushed.

“You don’t look old,” Dísa rolled her eyes at Fundin. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just being a shite.”

“You might’ve told me,” Fundin grumbled, plucking at his beard nervously, as if expecting the whole thing to go white under his fingertips.

“It’s such a little thing that it kept slipping my mind,” she said with a note of finality in her voice, as if that was the end of the discussion. Of course it wasn’t.

“I was far greyer when I married your sister,” Thrór said.

“You were also far older.”

“Not _that_ much older - ”

“Aye, you were.”

“You’re even older than I am!”

“I never said I wasn’t and we were _both_ older than Fundin - ”

Closing his eyes, Fundin imagined the peace Dóra had to be enjoying in the quiet of her own rooms. Ah, how nice to be able to make ready without all of one’s relations hovering around being vexing.

* * *

 

“Fuck!” Dóra shouted, not bothering to keep her voice down as there was no one there to hear her. The attendants responsible for drawing her bath, dressing her hair, and fixing her clothing were gone, either to enjoy the rest of the day out of work or to make ready themselves for the festivities. It was left to Dóra alone to put her jewelry on, a task usually taken up by the bride’s family, but Dóra hadn’t anyone to help.

Even Haldr had abandoned her at last. The simple truth was he hadn’t much hair to dress and he wanted to get some work done before the ceremony anyway. Dóra didn’t beg for him to stay behind; he likely wouldn’t have agreed if she’d asked.

Really, she didn’t need all that much aid. Her rings had gone on quickly enough and her bracelets hadn’t been too much trouble, it was the necklace that was causing all sorts of problems. She asked for half of her hair to be kept loose since she knew Fundin liked it when she wore her hair that way. Dóra thought it looked rather nice too, but for the fact that the heavy sheet of hair kept getting in the way of her clasps - it was quite a large piece, heavy with diamonds and rubies and the clasps kept snagging themselves on her curls. She had to have been at it for fifteen minutes and she was frustrated to tears that she could not cry because they would ruin her face paint and she had no idea how to fix it.

When the door knocker banged violently against the door, she almost swore again. Today, of all days to get unexpected visitors! She hardly ever had visitors; she was hardly ever home.

The necklace was horribly tangled in her hair and Dóra left it swinging when she heard another volley of knocks.

“I’m coming!” she yelped, scurrying over to the door, nearly tripping on the hem of her coat. Oh, _why_ had she gone for a full skirt? Her coats nearly always stopped at the knee, she ought to have stuck to her usual tastes and not let herself get talked into something too long and too ornate and…

“What are you doing here?” Dóra asked, panicking when she saw Sága and Gílla standing on the other side of the door. Both of them were dressed in their finest clothes, the sleeves of Sága’s gown were decorated with rows of pearls and Gílla’s coat was trimmed with ermine. They were clearly on their way to temple, their veils were draped over their arms, but Dóra, in her distracted state, couldn’t help assuming that they’d come about work. “Do you need me in the library?”

“Of course not! Silly girl,” Sága said with a laugh in her voice. “My word, but you look beautiful!”

“Do I?” Dóra asked.

“You surely do,” Gílla nodded, stepping in without being asked. “Haven’t you seen yourself? Where are your spectacles?”

“They were stolen by my seamstress,” Dóra said, standing aside that Sága might pass. “So, you see, if you’ve been sent to fetch me to the library I really can’t because I can’t read at the moment and I’m _determined_ to be on time - ”

“You won’t be if you aren’t dressed,” Sága said, taking in the sight of the drooping necklace. “Be still, dear, let me.”

“Haldr thought you might want company,” Gílla said, obligingly holding Dóra’s hair out of the way while Sága untangled the necklace. “Not that he said as much, he told us to get out of his sight because he’d had enough of this wedding nonsense...your, ah, mother’s not here, then?”

Dóra shook her head, earning a reproachful tug from Sága. “No, you didn’t see her in the library?”

“Not hide nor hair.”

“She’s probably in her office,” Dóra sighed. “I haven’t seen her all day, she’s probably working...she might have forgotten all about it - ”

“Done!” Sága interrupted her, spinning Dóra round to face her. She was beaming and her dark eyes glistened, just a little. “Oh, don’t you look _lovely?”_

“You’d look lovelier if you weren’t squinting,” Gílla clucked her tongue. “What was that seamstress thinking? What a fine thing it will be if you sign your name on the wrong line!”

“Or mistake Fundin entirely and kiss the juzrâl,” Sága laughed, blinking away her tears as if they’d never been.

“I’m _here!”_

Purple fabric whirled into the sitting room and somewhere in that whirlwind was Miss Elísif, who continued twirling after she’d made her entrance, likely because it made her coatskirts billow in manner that pleased her.

“Stop!” her father Elífr called after her, jogging to keep up. “We’ve just had your hair braided and your adadith doesn’t have time to re-tie all those ribbons.”

The black ringlets that ordinarily sprang from her head were well-tamed by pink ribbons, trimmed with golden thread, they waved in the breeze Elís generated around herself. She stopped twirling obediently and instead hopped up and down in front of Dóra.

“You look very pretty, Dóra! Do you like my coat?” she asked, eyes shining with excitement. “Isn’t it the nicest coat you’ve ever seen?”

“We didn’t know what you’d be wearing,” Elífr said, half-apologetically. “But purple and red go very well together - or so my husband says.”

“I’m sure he’s right,” Dóra said. She was not as well acquainted with Frár as she was with Elífr, but she knew he was an artist who wove tapestries and if anyone knew what colors looked well together, it would be him.

“Mizùl!” Elífr said brightly, giving Dóra’s shoulder a squeeze. “Not that you need it.”

“Âkminrûk zu,” Dóra smiled faintly. “Every bit helps, eh?”

“I’ll see you in the - Elís! If you keep spinning like that you’ll spill the wine,” Elífr chided his daughter before he was out the door.

“But that’s why I picked purple,” the lass said, logically. “That way if I spill, no one will know!”

“What brilliant forethought!” Dóra exclaimed, smile broadening. She waved Elífr away and signed her thanks again - not a moment too soon for Elís wrapped her arms around her middle and kissed her cheek hard.

“I’m _so_ excited!” she proclaimed, relinquishing Dóra and resuming her hopping about the room. “This is going to be the best and grandest wedding ever! May we go to temple now? Please? May we? I want to see what the canopy looks like.”

“It’ll look as it always does,” Gílla said, smiling fondly at Elís. “Come now, this isn’t the first wedding you’ve attended.”

“No, but it’s the first I’ve been cupbearer for and it’s the first wedding Dóra’s ever had!” Elís replied dreamily. “And it’ll be special ‘cos it’s for Dóra! May we go?”

“Ordinarily I’d say we had some time yet…” Sága said consideringly. “But considering the bride’s past history with regards to timeliness…”

 _“Oh -”_ Dóra started to protest, but Gílla took her arm and kissed her forehead.

“Don’t you ‘Oh,’ us!” she said with mock severity. “No doubt we’ll pass some meeting that wants recording or a book that needs rebinding and you’ll be distracted and miss the entire ceremony! Now, where’s your veil?”

“On the table,” Dóra gestured toward it with slumped shoulders, but she couldn’t stop smiling. She wasn’t so proud that she couldn’t recognize defeat when it was staring her in the face (or linking arms with her, or twirling about the room, or arranging her jewelry). The gracious thing to do would be to surrender - and anyway, she had promised herself that this was one occasion where she would not be tardy.

Sága carefully lifted the lovely creation up, careful not to catch the maile links upon the gems.

“We’ll wait until we’re at the temple doors before we put it on,” she said. “What a bonny thing!”

“It was Thrór and Thráin’s wedding present,” Dóra said, pride coloring her tone as she did.

“I’ll see if I can’t find that seamstress of yours,” Gílla offered as they made their way to the door, Elís running ahead of all of them to be the first outside. “If that kind of craftsmanship went into your _veil_ , I can’t wait to see what Thrór’s come up with for the rest of it - and you ought to be able to see it too. It’s your wedding day, after all!”

The very earth seemed to tip and Dóra found herself gripping Gílla’s arm more tightly as she remarked, “Aye, so it is. Well. Well! Let’s be off.”

Gílla looked down at Dóra suspiciously. “Have you eaten anything today?”

“...I had coffee?” Dóra replied meekly.

Gílla and Sága exchanged identical knowing looks.

“I knew _something_ would come up,” Gílla said as they stepped into the corridor. “First order of business - get some food in you! Then we’ll see about finding your spectacles…”

* * *

 

The temple was set deep within the Mountain. Below the treasury, but above the crypts and the deepest mines, it was itself a jewel. No graven images adorned the walls, but they were encrusted all over with gems, polished and faceted to reflect the beauty of the stone that their people had been Made to draw out of the virgin rock. The floor had been polished until it shone and the tiles were fitted seamlessly together with gilded joinings so that it felt like one rock beneath the boots of the Dwarves who came either with their offerings or to sit, heads covered, and chant the ancient prayers in their fathertongue.

Today there was one addition to the central platform from which were read the holy texts; a canopy built of white marble columns, above which was stretched a bolt of linen, woven with threads of gold and silver that shaded the marrying couple as if in a waterfall of molten metal.

It was said to be an exact replica of the wedding canopy lost in the grand temple of Khazad-dûm. The tradition was an old one, taken from the earliest days of their people when dwarrowkind was so plentiful beneath the earth that marriages were rare. The canopy sheltered the married couple, who were as one in their life together, but it had no walls as was as much a part of the stone of the Mountain as they were. Together, but nevertheless part of the larger community of Durin’s Folk.

The temple was so well-packed in the hour leading up to the wedding that it might well have been a feast day.There had not been a union of two such high-ranking members of the court since King Thrór wed his Captain of the Guard and the Mountain had not been so prosperous then as she was now. The sacred space was packed with friends, distant kin, and well-wishers whose interest was purely sartorial; after the rumor got round that Lady Halldóra had chosen Lady Dírfa to design her wedding clothes, it guaranteed that the balconies would be full of curious onlookers.

All dwarves covered their heads when they entered the temple. Most wore simple cloth veils, often embroidered though some were jewel-encrusted, such as those worn by the King and Queen whose crowns were left behind in the throne room, where they belonged. The King wore his best fur-trimmed robes of gold and and a blue so dark it was nearly black, and his beard was ornamented with clasps of onyx. The Queen wore the dress armor of the Mountain Guard, blue as the twilight sky on Durin’s Day and the emeralds that were sewn into her veil mimicked those braided into her hair on long mithril chains.

Between them - looking slightly trapped - was Prince Thráin clad from head to toe in black. The veil he wore to temple was black, his coat was black and the fur that trimmed his boots was black. It made the blue of his eyes stand out and everyone agreed that the prince made for a darling-looking boy.

The rest of the floor was taken up by what appeared to be the most curious warring factions the old rock had ever seen. On one side stood most of the King’s Guard (in red and gold) and the Mountain Guard (in blue and silver), from young to old, the greatest assemblage of strength and might of all Durin’s Folk. Most wore their helms and though they carried no weapons into the temple, they looked a fierce and forbidding lot nevertheless.

On the other side were the scribes and scholars. Clad in rich brocades and silks, by and large they were not so robust-looking, but their eyes were wise and here and there whispers broke out among them from those dwarrows who could not resist explaining the historical significance of a piece of architecture or the designs woven into the canopy to their younger colleagues. Halldóra’s brother was among that number, but he stood off to the side, a small volume occupying his attention.

A keen-eyed observer might have noticed that despite the librarian’s apparent preoccupation with his reading, his fingers never once turned the pages. Indeed, his eyes were fixed on something over the rim of his spectacles, a shadowy figure standing at the outskirts of the cluster of scholars. A glint of copper hair was quickly hidden away beneath the line of her veil as she readjusted it over her head.

Apart from Haldr’s fixed gaze, all eyes were turned upon the canopy. The juzrâl, a grey-bearded dwarf who wore robes that seemed to have been made of the same stuff as Erebor herself, stood alone beneath it. In front of him was small table upon which sat a small dagger, a single sheet of parchment, and an empty wineglass, wrapped in a piece of white cloth.

No instruments were permitted in the temple, save those to be burnt as offerings; instead all the music rose from the throats of the cantors, who stood behind the juzrâl, waiting for his signal to begin the ceremony. When it came, all the empty spaces in the room were filled with the sound of three-hundred voices singing as one.

The little cupbearer, a spritely little lass who managed to skip up to the canopy without spilling a drop of wine, placed the deep goblet before the juzrâl, and made a little bobbling bow. The juzrâl smiled at her and gestured for her to stand aside, in a place of honor next to the King and Queen. She stood where she was bid, clasping her hands together in front of her very demurely, but she could not resist bouncing a little on the balls of her feet, craning her neck to spy the bride and groom. The juzrâl called for them and the two finally emerged from two antechambers on other side of the altar before Miss Elísif began jumping up and down.

They walked alone until they came together beneath the canopy. That was how it had always been, both parties came forward of their own free will to be joined in the eyes of the law, their kinfolk, and their Maker.

And what a handsome couple they made. Fundin was resplendent in his gilded armor, his face and beard very handsome beneath his helm. Of course, he was well regarded as one of the finest-looking guardsman the old rock boasted, in addition to being the bravest - and certainly the tallest. It was touch and go whether or not he’d make it under the canopy without stooping, but he just about managed it. The gold of his armor shone like the sun above and the red of his cloak was as deep and dark as fresh-spilled blood. He’d make a terrifying sight on the battlefield, but his eyes were soft and he was smiling broadly at his bride.

Halldóra was as lovely as she could be. Her long coat was as dark as her husbands and the whorls of golden thread complimented his armor beautifully. Her jewels were magnificent and the golden veil was exquisitely rendered, a suitable gift from the King Under the Mountain. Like her husband-to-be, the lass was gilded over from top to toe, from her golden spectacles, to the embroidery on her coat, to the chain that connected the ring in her nose to a clasp in her ear. She was beaming up at him and her fingers twitched as she stopped herself from taking Fundin’s hands before the juzrâl said the appropriate blessing.

First they had to stand patiently for the invocation to Mahal, Maker of them all, blessed be His hands. All the congregation bowed their heads, a perpetual acknowledgement as their condition has His children, loved and despised, cherished and cast away. The juzrâl asked that He look upon these children of His hands with favor and shower blessings upon their heads and hands and home.

 **“So may it be!”** the assembled witnesses in the temple said, setting the walls to trembling with the force of their prayers.

The blessing of the hands came afterward, and as the juzrâl spoke the sacred words, he touched the backs of Fundin’s hands seven times each with the tip of the dagger, one for each of the Seven Fathers of their race. The longest invocation was for Father Durin ( **”Until he wakes again from sleep,”** the congregation intoned along with the juzrâl).

The invocation was repeated again for Halldóra, this time her hands were touched six times, once for each of the Six Mothers. When he was done, he handed the dagger to Halldóra and she very solemnly plunged the tip of it into the tabletop where it stood for several long moments in silence; this was a time of grief and remembrance for the desecration of Mt. Gundabad, Mother of Clan Longbeard, whose halls and stone were daily defiled by the presence of their enemies in her walls.

After this solemnity was observed, the juzrâl touched Halldóra’s hands again, her head, her mouth and her stomach with the lightest press of his fingers.

**“May you continue our line in her stead, bringing forth daughters and sons to bless our halls with their presence and skill, hands, minds and tongues.”**

**“So may it be,”** Halldóra recited carefully.

The remaining blessings for prosperity in wealth, triumph in war, and excellence in craft were gone through without incident. Fundin paused a half a moment too long in responding since he seemed rather dazed by the presence of his wife before him and Halldóra’s fingers twitched in apparent impatience; she seemed just as enthralled by Fundin as he was by her.

Finally the juzrâl blessed the wine, saying **“Both shall drink of this vessel as you will sip of life’s cup together, tasting both the bitter and the sweet, four hands, one home, one life.”**

 **“So may it be,”** Fundin spoke hastily this time for it was a short blessing and he hadn’t time to lose himself in contemplation of his beloved’s face; he seemed eager to have it all done with. He drank first, hands trembling just enough that he splashed a droplet or two into his beard.

 **“So may it be,”** Halldóra said just as quickly, taking the cup from Fundin’s hands, her fingers brushing his. She managed not to spill any of it, but she did drain the cup, which was not typical for a wedding, but a slight quirking of the juzrâl’s lips was the only indication that the proceedings had deviated from form.

 **“Give of her your hands,”** the juzrâl said, moving a half-step away to avoid being punched by one of Fundin’s huge, quick-moving fists. He handed the dagger to Halldóra and spoke to her with his hand still firmly grasping the blade. **“You, Halldóra Halthórul, have come to this place of your own will, to join your life and all your possessions to this Fundin Farinul, to go into his house, to become his espoused in law, and in the sight of the Maker?”**

 **“This I have done of my own will, to join my life and my possessions to this Fundin Farinul,”** she said, her voice clear as a ringing bell in the chamber. Her hands tightened on the hilt of the dagger and the juzrâl gave it to her. Halldóra’s hands were absolutely tiny compared to Fundin’s, the tip of the dagger looked like a needle as she gently plunged the sharp point into the tip of his finger. As soon as the first well of blood appeared, the juzrâl guided Fundin’s hand to the paper where he let fall three drops beside the place where he would make his signature.

The juzrâl placed the cloth-wrapped bundle against Fundin’s finger to stop the bleeding and then handed the dagger over to Fundin after he dutifully made his vow, **“This I have done of my own will, to join my life and my possessions to this Halldóra Halthórul, to come into my house, to become her espoused in law, and in the sight of the Maker.”**

Three spots of blood marked the place where Halldóra would give her signature and when the cloth was drawn away from her finger, the two signed the parchment, **Fundin Farinul** and **Halldóra Fundinul.**

After the juzrâl signed, there was one more task to perform. The cloth bundle, itself marked with their blood was placed on the floor, a symbol of the destruction of Khazad-dûm, a reminder that even the most joyous occasions must be tempered with the knowledge that they were a people in exile, that their joy could not be complete until they once again walked the halls of their fathers. In olden times, the bundle contained a gemstone to be crushed underfoot, an opal most often, but now most used a wineglass since it made a more satisfying sound when it shattered.

The wineglass was smashed beneath Fundin’s boot and the crunch of glass was quickly drowned out by the sound of hundreds of voices shouting and cheering, **“Muhudel!”**

The juzrâl’s solemn expression broke and he grinned up at Fundin. “Well, go on, lad!” he encouraged him. “Let’s have a kiss!”

The cheers threatened to blow the top off the Mountain. Dóra raised her arms to clasp him round the neck and Fundin swept her off her feet. The two kissed and the shouts of congratulations, the whistles, and applause went on and on long after they broke apart and smiled at each other, struggling to catch their breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THEY DID IT!


	29. Then Comes...Chapter One

Nearly three years later and the wedding was still the talk of Erebor. The ceremony of course had been beautiful, just as it ought to have been, but the _feast!_ Such food, such music, such spirits! And the young prince danced two dances with the bride – it was the least he could do for she to whom he owed his entire knowledge of Elvish. How handsome he looked, clad though he was in sables! The bride and the groom disappeared about halfway through the festivities, though few marked their going – and those who did hardly begrudged them their privacy. They were newly married, after all.

And very happily so, by all accounts. They had just recently returned from a trip abroad that had taken the better part of six months, journey included and if weeks of hard living along the roadside hadn't robbed the diamond of its shine, nothing would. A few of the Guard had taken up wagers – would Fundin and Halldóra still be speaking when they came home?

Those who laid down coin against the possibility were swiftly disappointed. The pair were every bit as unnecessarily cheerful as ever they were – Thráin's words, of course, but everyone swore up and down that he actually smiled when he saw the courtiers all returned from their journey to the Elvenlord's lands, just as hale as when they left him.

Work soon resumed as usual, Halldóra to the scriptorium – and the library, and the throne room, and the council chambers, and whichever other place required her talents. Fundin to his patrols, the training grounds, the gymnasium, the forges...perhaps that was the secret of their happiness, they hardly ever saw each other.

Life below the Mountain had naturally continued in their absence, but there were piles of work to be attended to when they got back, which kept them very busy. Many was the night that Fundin and Dóra exchanged nothing more than cursory pleasantries and drowsy kisses before they both dropped off to sleep.

Fundin really thought that Dóra had done marvelously on the roadside – granted, she wasn't happy to be sleeping aboveground and the light gave her a headache by midday, but she hardly ever complained. And she was so very happy to have the full run of Lord Elrond's personal collection of lore that he was afraid she'd never leave.

Very much afraid that she would never leave. He actually got a touch surly about it, despite himself. It was only she seemed so cheerful buzzing about, quills in her hair, struggling with a dozen or half a dozen books and twice as many scrolls. She got on with the Elves as he never could – he was forever looking over his shoulder, they loomed in ways that made him uncomfortable. But Dóra didn't seem to care that she only came up to about their shins, she'd hold conversations with them that went on all night while he tottered off to bed on his own and she joined him later.

Looking back from the vantage point of their home, his jealousy (aye, that was what it was, imagine!) seemed ridiculous. Dóra was a dwarf, after all, and though she'd enjoyed her holiday, she'd never want to take up residence amongst them. He had been quite looking forward to time spent alone together, just the two of them, now that they were back in their proper place.

Only their situations were quite reversed; rather than him popping off to bed without her, she was the first under the covers more often than not. It was unusual, while they were courting he was always having to remind her to sleep, often bodily picking her up, chair and all, from behind her desk to deposit her on his mattress. Ever since their return, he was far more likely to find Dóra asleep on her desk or discover that she'd been slumbering away before he mounted the stairs to their room.

It was a credit to her work ethic, but it made her husband uneasy; there did come a time when enough was enough.

The third night Fundin came home after dinner and found his wife curled up on the couch, fast asleep with a book over her face, he tentatively suggested that she might want to take a day for herself.

It was a tricky thing to say; no dwarf wanted to hear it implied that they were weak and no dwarf wanted to be the one implying it. Ordinarily, he was amazed by Dóra’s stamina, working so much, in so many varied positions without tiring or even becoming a grump by day’s end. And, to be sure, carrying his wife to bed had a certain charm, but there were dark circles under her eyes and she was yawning over her supper and, well, he _was_ her husband, wasn’t he? If he couldn’t care for her well-being, who could?

“Where are you bound in the morning?” he asked when she sat on their bed, unlacing her boots. “If it’s the library, I say sleep in. Haldr can spare you.”

Dóra sighed and blew out a breath. “You might be on to something,” she admitted. “I thought it was road-weariness; I’ve been tired ever since we got home, but that was going on three months ago.”

“Takes a while to get used to being home,” Fundin said generously as he got into bed.

Halldóra favored him with a small, ironic smile. “Oh, aye, easy for you to say, for you’re as spry as ever.”

“Well, I’m used to it,” Fundin replied logically, kissing her on the nose. Dóra smiled and cuddled up in his arms. Taking a breath for courage, Fundin licked his lips and tentatively added, “Maybe talk to a Healer if it goes on much longer, eh?”

But she was already asleep before he’d gotten the suggestion out.

* * *

 

Not for the first time in her life, Dóra was a tiny bit concerned she was boring her husband. The same concerns sprang up in Rivendell, when she was so very occupied with Lord Elrond’s scribes and librarians and he responded to her enthusiastic chatter with increasingly uncommunicative grunts.

Over the years, Dóra had become well acquainted with Fundin’s grunts, they came in five varieties. The first was a sort of grunt-sigh meant to communicate his impatience with someone who he thought had a bit too high an opinion of themself or the importance of whatever grievance they’d chosen to air at court. The second was a hearty kind of grunt of exertion that was employed when he was drilling with the Guard. The third was a short sharp grunt that came from physical pain. The fourth was a sort of huff of fond annoyance most often vocalized in the presence of his nephews. The fifth and final and her personal favorite was the grunt that meant, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it’s interesting; go on.’

That was what he’d started off doing doing their sojourn in the West, but grunt the fifth sounded more and more like grunt the fourth and then, alarmingly, grunt the first. Turned out he’d been more than a little concerned that, liking Lord Elrond’s library so much, she might choose to extend her stay there beyond Thrór’s engagement. She’d told him straight out that he was being silly and bopped him on the nose - that earned her grunt the third, but he was a good deal happier all around after that.

They were well away from Elvish archives now, but falling asleep directly after dinner every night could hardly be more stimulating for him than her exclamations over the quality of the colored inks in Imladris. She couldn’t fathom what was the matter with her; they’d been back for ages, they were well in the midst of winter now and she ought to have gotten over whatever havoc sleeping above ground had played with her sleeping habits.

Coffee hadn’t helped, which was most alarming; it was an enchanted elixir as far as she was concerned. More than once her colleagues joked that the strength at which she brewed it could wake Durin himself from sleep. But it wasn’t helping. Just the day before she’d set water to boil and hadn’t even managed to add it to the grounds before she dozed off on the couch.

Even Haldr noticed she wasn’t quite herself and for Haldr to squint his eyes and pay attention to something beyond whatever tome was inches away from his nose was nothing short of remarkable.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked bluntly, looming over her as she reshelved an entire row of philosophy books. “Where were you yesterday?”

“I slept in,” she replied since ‘slept in’ sounded deliberate whereas ‘overslept’ seemed more haphazard an explanation. “I...haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

Haldr slapped his palm against her forehead, frowning deeply when Dóra drew away from him, muttering that she was far too old to have a cold.

“Go to a healer,” he said. “I’ll not have you fainting on the ladders, you’d crack your head on the floor and I don’t even want to imagine the mess.”

“I’m not going to _faint,”_ she replied a trifle testily. “Honestly.”

“Honestly,” Haldr shot back. “Get thyself to a healer or I’ll carry you out - nay, I’ll get that brute of a husband to do it for me, where is he anyway?”

“At work,” Dóra replied, both eyebrows shooting up when Haldr snorted at her.

It was the third variety of his snorts, the one that meant, ‘I’m going to give you a moment to consider rescinding your previous statement, which was, as I’m sure you know, inane.’

Dóra did not rescind and Haldr, folding his arms and glaring now, asked, “Well, that’s husbandly care, isn’t it? His wife’s practically a puddle at my feet and he’s off bashing children with sticks.”

“He does not _bash_ the children,” Dóra corrected. “That’s more your mode, isn’t it?”

“Weighted wooden sticks are very different from the odd thwack with a stylus,” he waved his hands as if her words were smoke. “Off with you! And don’t come back until they’ve fixed you!”

Then he swatted her on the bottom with one of the books she’d just shelved. That was how she knew her brother was actually quite concerned; abuse of library materials was something that he stooped to as a last, desperate resort.

Dóra trudged through the corridors at a much slower pace than was her wont. Getting kicked out of the library like a ten-year apprentice with a runny nose was not exactly on her agenda for the day. Once she was through there, she had to put in five hours of copying, then run round to the courts and collect all relevant materials for depositing in the archives and sort through anything that Thrór might need to glance over and put his seal on. She simply did not have time to waste with a healer.

Hopefully she’d be given a tonic for her woes and sent off in less than half an hour.

Two hours later she was sent off empty-handed, but the corridor echoed with hearty congratulatory shouts of, “Muhudel Mahal!” She’d not given such a shower of blessings since her wedding day.

Dóra thought back to that night. The juzrâl’s blessings came back one by one. For the reconsecration of Mt. Gundabad, their despoiled Mother. _**May you continue our line in her stead…**_

Well, she had _agreed_ , hadn’t she?

One of her hands hovered unconsciously over her midsection, but the moment she realized it, she used that hand to press her coat down and adjust her belt. Nay, she thought, not for the first time that afternoon. She hadn’t had to loosen her belt one notch. It couldn’t be. She’d have known, wouldn’t she? Weren’t you supposed to _know?_

She hadn’t thought much of it when the apothecary left her to fetch someone else with more “experience.” She thought he looked a little young; likely there were certain compounds he wasn’t meant to mix. And then she was surprised to see Maeva come in, who wasn’t an apothecary at all, but a midwife and never let it be said that Halldóra Fundinul was the brightest dwarf under the Mountain because even _then_ she hadn’t understood. Not until Maeva kissed her and congratulated her and sent her off with powders she wanted mixed in tea and taken to “ease the baby’s way a bit.”

The baby. The baby that was currently in her womb and, in less than two years’ time would be out and about in the world. With the Maker’s blessings, of course.

Dóra hadn’t given much thought to children, not really, not in any concrete terms, just in a vague sort of, ‘Oh, aye, when I have children…’ sort of way. She hadn’t any names picked out - or Names, even, which was rather more important. Though Fundin ought to have some sort of say in that.

She ought to tell him straight away, she was sure this was the sort of thing that a body shared right off - and if she didn’t tell him, he’d very soon find out from Maeva, or even Óin, who had his mother’s ear for gossip, if not her tact in disseminating it. And that didn’t seem right, it ought to come from his wife, not from his nephew.

That thought made her smile. Fundin was so good to those lads, though they’d each of them loudly insisted that they were quite grown up enough not not to need minding. Surely he’d be happy to have one of his own. The mental image of Fundin cradling a baby in his arms gave her a little flutter of happiness in her stomach that chased away some of her nerves. She really should tell him as soon as possible.

Then again, they had time, didn’t they? And sometimes...sometimes things didn’t always work out. It was early days yet. Anything might happen.

But when Dóra got home she found Fundin there already, pacing. Evidenttly he heard that she was ordered out of the library to the Healer’s (though by the time word made it up to the warriors the story had shifted so that she was _carried_ out of the library in a faint, which explained why he’d come home at all) and was worried about her.

“Everything alright?” he asked, hands clutching her shoulders, eyes tracing her up and down, settling on the little bag of vials that Maeva had given her. “What’s all that?”

“Fish bones, I think,” Dóra replied, giving him a smile and rising up on her toes to meet him half way in a kiss.

Fundin sank down a bit and kissed her, but drew back quickly. “Fish bones? Why? What’d they say?”

“Everything’s fine,” she assured him. He’d still not let go of her shoulders and she wrapped her hands around his wrists reassuringly. “Only I’m expecting.”

The pause that followed her statement seemed to last an extraordinarily long time, Fundin’s concerned expression never wavered. Indeed, Dóra was fairly certain he wasn’t even blinking. Or breathing.

“A baby,” she said, as if in clarification.

“Oh,” Fundin replied. His hands slid off her shoulders and Dóra let him go. He looked at her again, no less nervously than he had before. Swallowing hard he added, with a crack in his voice that no one heard since he turned seventy, “I’m glad it’s nothing serious.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, _Fundin!_


	30. Chapter 30

It wasn’t many months before Halldóra’s condition became evident to the whole of the Mountain. Several times daily, he was stopped and congratulated on the blessed event. He withstood such attacks stoically, nodding, but rarely saying anything.

The fact of the matter was, Fundin hadn’t any idea what to say. Or how to say it. ‘Thank you,’ seemed the quickest and most appropriate way to extricate himself from the well-wishers, but the words seemed to get stuck in his throat half way up, emerging as a sort of strangled gasp. 

It was well that his courtly duties occupied so much of his time for Thrór saved him a great deal of trouble in mustering up the appropriate level of enthusiasm. Before he had time to open his mouth, his brother-in-law would burst out with a merry, “Isn’t it wonderful? Best news I’ve had all year!”

And, indeed, it likely was. Thrór adored children, even more than most dwarves and ever since his own son had grown too old for cuddles, he’d been rather hurting for want of a dwarfling to shower with affection.  
Thrór, by all accounts, had taken to fatherhood like a gem to its setting. Ever since he was a little dwarfling, he’d been a nurturer. Dísa said that when they were children, spending the night together, he’d insist on saying a personal good-night to each of his stuffed toys and dolls, tucking them in and kissing their foreheads while she jumped on the bed, bored with such kindly rituals. It was said that the impression of most dwarves’ personalities were set in childhood and so it was for Thrór and Dísa. 

Fundin had toys, of course, being the youngest of three he had _many_ toys, but though he had played with him he did not now remember behaving especially tenderly toward them. He could not even say for certain where they’d all gotten to, having been packed away over the years. Or maybe discarded. Wouldn’t that be something, not having even a stuffed bear to pass along to his son or daughter. 

And that was the crux of it - he had no idea what to do with a child of his own getting. No idea what he could _offer_ a child of his own getting aside from a well-established home, a well-established fortune, and a good reputation in his craft. Somehow, that did not seem like quite enough. 

Ever since Dóra had announced the news and he had given such an inane response - nothing serious! It was the most serious new’s he’d been given since the day Gróin told him their parents weren’t coming back from the wars - the chief of his thoughts had been occupied with a sort of numb dread. He wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t.

Nothing had been done to prepare him for the eventuality of being a father. He hardly remembered what it was to _have_ a father. Farin was, in his mind, little more than an impression made of viewing his portrait dozens of times per day when he passed in and out of his room and the stories his sister and brother sometimes told. 

If he tried very hard and stretched his mind back very far a blurred image of a grey beard and strong hands lifting him up entered his mind. Perhaps he remembered riding on his father’s shoulders since the face was unseen in this dark memory. His mother he remembered more clearly, Dísa had her strong chin and once had her sharp nose, though his sister’s was crooked from years of taking a bashing in the Guard. Gróin had her eyes, dark blue and very piercing. He’d not been permitted to interrupt her at work, as a healer the herbs she worked with were either too delicate or too dangerous to be anywhere near clumsy little hands. But she would play with him when she was done, he remembered she used to hold him on her hip when she made her rounds, he was given toffees to eat from some of her patients if he was good and he tried to be good...but then his memories cut off. Faded into nothing, leaving him without any idea of what a parent - a truly _good_ parent - ought to be. 

He did not like this, these feelings of doubt, of inadequacy. And he was damn certain Dóra didn’t like it. It made him timid; he hadn’t done more than kiss her goodnight in months. 

_That_ was cowardice, plain and simple. Come of one moment of thoughtlessness in the bedroom that seemed to him, at the time, to prove that he was not remotely ready to be a parent if he couldn’t even get things right before the child was born. 

Dóra’d gotten her old energy back not long after Maeva informed her that she was expecting. As she hadn’t fallen asleep on the sitting room sofa, they’d naturally taken advantage of the fact that they’d both put work aside for the day and had only each other to think of.

The casual observer wouldn’t have noticed a bit of difference in his wife, but Fundin considered himself quite the expert on Dóra’s face and figure and that figure was looking just a little more filled out in the middle than she ordinarily did and her breasts, which had always been full and round and just to his liking had become even moreso. He was paying them his usual attention when he felt her wince and push at his shoulders, gently, but insistently. 

“Would you mind...moving off, a bit?” she asked, a tough apologetically. “They’re a mite sore.”

And that was all it took to send Fundin into an absolutely panic. Not that he showed it. He merely stiffened, apologized profusely and rolled right off her, heart beating as if he’d run a race. 

“Oh, no, there’s no need for that!” Dóra insisted, trying to tug him back over, but he was resolute to the point of ridiculousness. And since that night he’d not made a move to touch her below the shoulders, despite the fact that she was making it more and more obvious that she’d _welcome_ such advances, and gladly. The thought of hurting her again, even for a moment, chilled him. 

Now, looking sweetly fuller in the face and clearly with child, he was sure that no matter how careful he was, he was bound to do something _wrong_ , something to injure her or the child and it was best to forget the whole thing until the baby was safely delivered and then, at least, if he was to be a wretched father, the child would suffer separately from his wife. 

Yet despite his best intentions, Dóra seemed to be suffering anyway. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked him, a week ago, looking so tenderly up at him that he almost blurted out all his doubts to her, but, as happened when he received congratulations, he couldn’t get a word out. “You’re troubled, won’t you tell me what it is?”

“M’fine,” he mumbled, kissing her forehead. “Late for work.”

But he wasn’t late and he wasn’t fine and though Dóra stopped asking him to talk about his troubles, he caught her staring at him, sometimes, with the saddest look on her face. It was only the thought of the look of disappointment she’d surely fix him with if he told her what the matter was that stopped him from confessing all.

He _ought_ to have been prepared. It was in their marriage vows, after all, the getting of children was on the minds of most, if not all marrying dwarves. It was a great honor to be capable of carrying a child, to be so blessed by the Maker with a child, he ought to have been proud, he ought to have been excited, he ought to have been _happy_ , but he wasn’t, he was terrified. 

Talking to _anyone_ about it seemed absurd, Thrór would never understand, Maeva brought children into the world almost daily, his sister had never feared anything in her left and Gróin...Gróin had said nothing since he started courting Halldóra that indicated he thought he was suited for married life. ‘Too young,’ was his refrain and if Fundin told him that he looked upon the impending birth of his first child with dread, that would only confirm his brother’s long-held suspicions that he was not ready for so much responsibility. 

It had gotten to the point of avoiding the whole lot of them, where he could. He spoke to his sister of war and the hunt; he hardly talked to Thrór at all since his brother-in-law’s thoughts were so much occupied with the child. Maeva was forever inquiring after Dóra and he could only shrug and suggest that she ought to track her down and ask her in person since he wasn’t at all qualified to answer for her. Gróin he saw at suppertime only, but he’d long ago learned how to wolf down a meal and leave the table quick as he could; it was a skill that served him well as a child when he and his sister got to arguing and he was tired of hearing it. 

Ironically, the only one whose company he could tolerate was Thráin, strange as it was. For his nephew was not at all pleased to be gaining a cousin. Indeed, he seemed to be dreading the impending event just as much as Fundin - if not more. 

He had ceased taking regular lessons with Dóra - his Elvish having improved to the point where he could attend classes with his peers, but she liked to have him round of an afternoon for a walk to the market where they would split a bag of nuts or chocolates. But he had begged off the last several weeks, finally telling Dóra that, “I might as well get used to being given the brush-off; you won’t give me a moment’s notice when you’ve got a baby to fuss over.”

When she related the tale to Fundin, her eyes got a bit watery and he managed to drum up a thimbleful of annoyance at his nephew, though he was the only soul under the Mountain who seemed to realize that having a child was not necessarily cause for unbridled glee. It wasn’t right of him to snap at her, at any rate. 

“Could you talk to him?” she asked Fundin hopefully. “I told him that he’d be just as dear to me as ever, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Thráin doesn’t hear anything when he makes up his mind to be dismal,” Fundin replied uneasily, but he agreed to try, for her sake. It was the one thing she’d asked him to do lately that he felt he could comply with. 

And so he snagged Thráin by the back of the shirt when he’d dressed himself after the apprentice guard finished training and pulled him into an antechamber off the main arena for privacy.

“I heard you made my wife cry,” he said severely as he could, folding his arms over his chest.

Thráin was unimpressed. “Dóra cries over everything,” he said, but he did not roll his eyes, merely shifted them over to the side, swallowing a little nervously. 

Fundin raised an eyebrow and waited. Thráin could be stubborn as a rock, but Fundin was no slouch in that area, if needed he could out-silence him; acting as a spear-carrier at court was an excellent way of learning to keep one’s mouth shut through any circumstances.

“Well, I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” Thráin said at last. Fundin was standing between himself and the door, he’d never be able to get through if he didn’t stand aside. “Once the baby’s here, she’ll only have attention to spare for him.”

“That’s a year off,” Fundin said, then cursed himself since he was meant to alleviate Thráin’s fears, not confirm them. “Anyway, that isn’t so. She adores you - don’t ask me _why_ , but she does. Could be she has a soft spot for grumps. And far be it from me to accuse you of having a better in that area, but if she spends time with Haldr, I can’t see any reason why she’d drop you.”

“That’s part of her craft, books and that,” Thráin said, a plaintive note entering his voice. “She’s the busiest dwarf I know, just think how much busier she’ll be once you two have a baby! Ama says they’re a lot of work and trouble for the first five years, almost more than they’re worth. Craft and family, that’s what’s most important and as I’m neither - ”

“You are family, or don’t you remember the wedding?” Fundin interrupted.

“Trying to forget,” Thráin scowled. Honestly, for all that he was growing up a bit, he could be the most childish brat that ever whinged beneath the earth. Even now he acted as if it was a great sacrifice for him to have gone out in company for their sakes. “But I’m _your_ family, only hers because of law. And she’s my only...never mind.”

Thráin’s pale cheeks had gone a little red and he looked at the floor rather than at Fundin. Letting out a little huffing sigh, he collected himself and looked up at Fundin, frowning. “Did she tell you to scold me?”

“No and I’m not scolding you,” Fundin replied testily. “She wanted me to tell you that she’s not going to ignore you once the...after. She thought you’d listen to me.”

“Why?” Thráin asked, wrinkling his nose.   
“Because she’s got more faith in me than I deserve!” Fundin hadn’t meant to shout. Really, he hadn’t. His intention was to deliver the statement matter-of-factly. Wryly, even. But his voice thundered out, echoing loudly in the small chamber and even Thrain took a half-step away from him. 

His nephew blinked, mouth dropping open in surprise. He licked his lips and tried to look around Fundin’s arm, hoping to see or hear someone who’d heard the commotion and might provide him with an escape route. But no one came and his uncle was still blocking the door.

Despite himself, Thráin looked up at Fundin and asked, “Are you alright?” 

“Fine,” Fundin said shortly. “Go talk to Dóra, I’m no good at this.”

“No good at what?” Thráin asked, but Fundin turned on his heel and stalked out the door without answering. 

In contrast to his earlier desire to be gone as quickly as possible, Thráin remained where he was, puzzling over his uncle’s odd conduct for several minutes. In the end he _did_ decide to see Dóra, not out of his own interest, but his uncle’s. 

“I think Fundin’s gone mad,” he announced, letting himself into her office without knocking. 

Dóra looked up from her writing and the expression on her face was not one of concern or alarm, as Thráin might have expected, but relief.

“Oh, you’ve noticed as well?” she asked. “I thought I must have been imagining things. He’s been so _odd_ lately and he won’t tell me what the matter is.”

“You already knew?” Thráin asked, disappointed. “I came all the way down here for nothing, then?”

“Not nothing!” Dóra exclaimed, jumping right out of her chair. She grabbed his arm and fairly dragged him into the room. “I’ve not seen you in an age, you sit right down.”

Thráin was forced into a chair and plied with sweets - he didn’t have to be plied with those so much, but in principle he was being held against his will. Certainly if he had come with the sole intention of paying Dóra a call they would’ve found better things to talk about than Fundin’s recent withdrawal from all decent society.

“He hasn’t even been speaking to _me,”_ Dóra said fretfully, winding a curl of hair around her finger. “I think...no, I’m sure he’s a bit overwhelmed, with the child on the way - I’m more than a bit overwhelmed, but whenever I try to speak to him, he just says he’s fine and wanders off.”

“He can’t go on like that,” Thráin said forcefully, helping himself to Dóra’s very last sugared almond. “For then folks will start talking to _me_ instead and I won’t have it.”

Dóra laughed and Thráin smiled back. “Ah!” she said, satisfied. “There’s the lad, I’ve missed him. But nay, we’d not want you suffering overmuch from conversation, poor thing, you’d be too worn down to be of much use to anyone afterward.”

“Aye,” he nodded. “I don’t know what Uncle Fundin’s got to worry about anyhow, he’s not birthing the babe, is he? And it’s not as though a newborn dwarfling could do him any harm. He could just step on him and have done.”

Dóra wrinkled her nose at the idea of Fundin squashing their firstborn underfoot - then paused. While a bit extreme, the idea did have merit. At least it gave her some idea of what was troubling Fundin. It simply never occurred to her…

Leaping up again Dóra kissed Thráin’s cheek before she dashed for the door. “You’re a brilliant lad!” she called over her shoulder. “I knew you’d do me a good turn and don’t you dare keep so long away from me ever again, understand?”

“I’m telling you, you won’t notice whether I’m here or not!” Thráin called after her, one eye on the biscuit tin. Well. Even if he was to lose his one and only friend in a twelvemonth, he might stop by every now and again. Just so long as she kept her sweets well-stocked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fundin is really at his most Durin right now - let's hope he snaps out of it, for all their sakes.


	31. Chapter Three

It was decidedly a strange thing, carrying a child. In the first place, everywhere she went Dóra was inundated with compliments and well-wishes (not a bad thing in and of itself but she did have places to be). In the second...well, physically, it was a bit odd and occasionally downright painful.

The tenderness in her breasts had abated - or perhaps she’d simply become so accustomed to it that it no longer bothered her quite so much as it had toward the beginning. Of course, now that she was heading toward the middle stage she had other things that were taking up rather more of her notice - or at least room in her clothing.

Perhaps that was why Fundin had been so distant, of late. What was once nearly flat as a board evolved to a small bump, as if she’d eaten a large meal that hadn’t been digested. The bump became a mound which was ever-expanding. It occurred to her briefly that he might have been a little worried about doing their baby harm during more intimate moments, but Dóra simply hadn’t realized how thoroughly nervous Fundin was until Thráin came to visit.

Until then, though she hadn’t said as much, Dóra’s feelings had been a little bruised ever since Fundin started to withdraw a bit from her. It was as if he didn’t think of the child as ‘theirs,’ a gift from the Maker to bring up together. He hardly spoke of it at all, neither of the future nor the present. He kissed her lips, ran his hands down her back or rested them on her shoulders, stroked her cheeks and hair, but he did not touch her waist or stomach and since she’d asked him to divert his attentions from her breasts the last time they were intimate together, he’d left those well alone as well. It was quite disheartening, but if it was merely a bad case of nerves, she was sure they could work through it together. They’d weathered his brother and her mother’s disapproval of their commitment to one another, this was a blessed occasion! Surely it would be easier to divert his thoughts to happiness.

Which would, in turn, divert her thoughts to happiness. Sometimes she would daydream about this child, imagine a little one with Fundin’s lovely blue eyes. Hopefully a good-tempered little dear, like Glóa’s youngest boy who smiled and cooed - and was now walking and talking, an inquisitive darling who came to the library less frequently now than in former days since he had a tendency to cause a tiny bit of destruction everywhere he went. But it was difficult to lose oneself in pleasant imaginings when it seemed that Fundin didn’t quite see the baby as _theirs_.

Once in a blue moon he’d look her over and say, “Alright?” which was as close as he came to discussing her condition.

“Fine,” she’d reply eagerly, hoping that _this_ would be the time they had an actual conversation, but her husband would simply nod and change the subject or walk away.

She’d brought it up with her colleagues once, but no one seemed to have any advice; apparently Fundin was unique.

“My husband couldn’t keep his hands off me,” Gílla smiled dreamily at the memory. “I swear, he almost pushed the Healer out of the way to get to our firstborn...but Fundin’s the youngest in his family, could be he hasn’t much experience of babies.”

“He has two nephews,” Dóra reminded her, shaking her head. “And _I’m_ the youngest, I’ve only ever looked after a few dwarflings here and there, I don’t have any practical experience being a parent!”

“Well, no one does ‘til they are one,” Gílla reminded her, patting her shoulder. “Chin up. He’ll come round.”

Only he didn’t.

“That’s the way with warriors, sometimes,” Glóa said. “They can’t figure out what to do with a dwarfling until it’s big enough to bear tossing about like a spear. Best nip it in the bud; you don’t want to be looking after the babe by your lonesome until he’s twelve.”

She most certainly did not - how would she get any work done if she was the little one’s primary minder? But it looked like things might pan out that way if she didn’t speak up.

There was one soul whose advice Dóra had neither sought nor wanted - her mother. Actually, to state the case quite honestly, she’d not told her mother she was expecting. And Haldr was under strict instructions to keep the happy news to himself for as long as possible that it might remain happy. No doubt her mother would take even this event, universally thought of as joyful among their people, and twist it into something dreadful.

Dóra knew she ought to write. The birth was less than a year away, it wouldn’t do to tell her mother she was going to be a grandmother after she already was one. It would be more thoughtful to give her time to get used to the idea. But first, Dóra had to deal with her husband.

“Can we have a talk?” she asked one evening when Fundin was once again going to head to bed with a chaste good-night kiss and nothing more.

“I, er, talked to Thráin,” he said, turning down the covers and getting into bed next to her. Fundin blew out the candle on his side of the bed and gave her a peck on the lips. “Told him he was being an idiot, I’d expect him in a day or two.”

“I had him by already,” Dóra said, moving her candle slightly closer. Fundin’s skin glowed like bronze and she bit her lip, lying on her side. She hadn’t shivered, but he moved the blanket up to her shoulder, as if he was worried she was cold. “Your talk was...well, it left quite the impression.”

“I might have shouted at him,” Fundin said, squirming a little guiltily.

“I’m sure he’s not too wounded,” Dóra replied. “I gave him toffees.”

“You’re sweet,” Fundin smiled, kissing her nose. “You’ll...ah. Never mind.”

A change had come over his face. First worry, then embarrassment, then his expression closed down completely. Halldóra had seen such a reaction from him before recently, chalked it up to tiredness. Now she knew better.

“What?” she asked, looking up into his eyes earnestly. “What were you going to say?”

“Nothing, really,” he said. Fundin rolled over, burying his face in the pillow. “Nothing. Just...I’m going to sleep, g’night, love you.”

One did not rise to the position of Erebor’s Most Well-Paid Busybody (Vitr had a bit of an annoying sense of humor) for nothing. Dóra snuggled closer to her husband and poked him on the shoulder.

“What is it?” she asked, parting his hair and mouthing the words into his bare shoulder. “You can tell me.”

“I really can’t.”

Fundin spoke into the pillow, his words were half muffled, but his wife had sharp ears and she heard them clear as daylight. “Try.”

He rolled back over and looked at the canopy overhead. “It’s really nothing. Only...well, I imagine that’s how it’ll be. You’ll be sweet and I’ll shout.”

“Oh,” she began, about to continue with, _you don’t really believe that,_ but she stopped herself. “Oh.”

Because it was clear, from how he spoke to how he lay, stiff and still and staring, that he _did_ believe it. And Dóra gave herself quite the mental telling-off for not having noticed before.

“I don’t know,” Fundin said, half to himself. “I mean that. I _don’t_ know. What to do. I haven’t so much as held a baby in fifty years and I’ve seen you with your fellow masters’ children and you...you’re so sweet with them, they adore you. ‘Missus Dóra,’ this, and ‘Missus Dóra,’ that. Sorry I’m not - I’m not trying to sound...sound bitter. Because they’re right to love you, I - I love you well...I like to think _best_ , but...I can be a husband, I think, just...I haven’t...I don’t...I haven’t any notion how to be a father. None at all.”

The small portraits of his parents lived on the mantle in their bedroom. Fundin didn’t look toward it, but he didn’t have to. Dóra knew that they perished on the battlefield when he was very small; that was about all she knew about them because Fundin did not talk about them very much - not out of apathy, but because he simply did not remember very much about them.

“Well,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand. “I suppose I don’t know how to be a mother either. Given the example I’m to follow.”

Fundin snorted without any humor whatever. “That’s no puzzle. Just think, ‘What would Dómarra do or say?’ and then do the opposite.”

“She’s not… _all_ bad,” Dóra replied weakly, bound by filial obligation not to join in speaking disrespectfully of her mother behind her back. “I had a wonderful education.”

Another hollow snort of a laugh. “Aye, that you did, all closed in under lock and key. Deprived me of your company for nigh on forty years I might have enjoyed it.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Dóra rolled her eyes and snuggled closer to her husband. This time he pulled her in, draping a hand about her waist, hesitant fingers resting lightly on her stomach. “You would have had no use for me at all, a mousy little thing who could only recite and hadn’t any ideas of her own.”

“Nah, it’s the other way around,” Fundin countered confidently. “Wee bitty genius that you were wouldn’t have had a word to say to me, who couldn’t read ‘til he was over thirty. Still can’t do it all that well, truth be told.”

“You get on,” Dóra said dismissively, closing her eyes. The beat of his heart under her ear was a sound she’d missed very much of late. “You’d get on better if you applied yourself…”

“You apply well enough for both of us,” Fundin chuckled, this time his mirth had a genuine ring to it. “Ah, lass, I hope the babe has your brains. And your looks.”

Tilting her head up, she saw that Fundin was looking down on her with a sweet smile and those kindly eyes she loved so much. “I want them to have your eyes,” she said honestly. “And your goodness. And your height. That last bit’s most important, naturally.”

“No!” Fundin exclaimed at once. “Then what good’ll your brains do ‘em? They’ll be forever bashing their heads on doorways.”

“Surely you don’t want a little one who _stays_ little?” she asked. “You’d like them to be able to get things off shelves without forever reaching for a stool.”

“I’ll just do the fetching for them,” Fundin replied carelessly. “Carry ‘em about ‘til they’re old enough to mind about it.”

Dóra grinned. “That’s the spirit! Shouting nothing, you’ll be their big, brave adad who can get things off shelves and teach them all about warfare and smithing, if they’re of a mind to learn.”

Fundin smiled and, for the moment at least, seemed at his ease. “Do you know, all this speculating...it’ll come to nothing.”

“Why?” Dóra asked, closing her eyes and sighing, seeing once again that little round face with big blue eyes in her mind.

“The second the babe’s born, you know who’ll dash right over to snatch the child up? And we’ll likely never see it again?”

Dóra didn’t need to guess, she absolutely knew, and both of them answered at once, “Thrór.”

* * *

 

“You do realize this isn’t your baby,” Dísa said irritably as Thrór diverted their trek through the marketplace - always a tedious and slow journey since he stopped to talk to _everyone_ \- to see about getting a mural painted in the room that he decided Dóra and Fundin ought to set aside as the nursery. “You do realize I’m not the one who’s expecting and that the baby isn’t _yours_. Don’t you?”

“I’m going to be an uncle,” Thrór said cheerfully. “Might as well start doing my duties by them now.”

“There needn’t be a mural,” his wife rolled her eyes and folded her arms, leaning against the doorway of the shop. The girl minding the counter and buggered off into the back to bring out a few samples of sketches for nursery’s done in the past few years, nauseating things in pale blues and greens with fat bears having picnics or somesuch foolishness. She’d felled bears many a time in her day and they were never carrying hampers. “There’s not a one in that house now, wasn’t one when I was growing up in it.”

“And look how you turned out,” Thrór winked and dodged a well-aimed swipe at his head. “You didn’t object half so much when we had one painted for Thráin.”

Sometimes Dísa worried about her husband’s mind; ever since she could remember he had the spottiest memory for facts. _“You_ had one painted, I told you it was a waste of time.”

“He loved it,” Thrór recalled, once again, gilding the facts.

“He couldn’t see it,” she reminded him. “He spent nearly all of his first two years asleep.”

“But when he opened his eyes, he loved it,” Thrór replied, smiling at the shopgirl who’d come back with samples. “Thank you, m’dear, now let’s see...what do you think about that?”

The ‘that’ in question was a sample sketch of toymakers at work, rosy-cheeked and smiling with the fruits of their labors apparently come to life and dancing about the room.

“The babe’ll have nightmares that his toy chest will wage war on him,” she predicted. Tellingly, Thrór said nothing and merely turned the page to something else a little less disturbing.

Thráin was prone to nightmares as a child, between the ages of ten and twenty he spent nearly a quarter of his nights in his parents’ bed, waking them with shouts and tears. Dísa couldn’t understand what there was to be frightened of, but no matter how many time she checked beneath the bed and cupboards for monsters, peeking behind tapestries and promising to sleep with her best axe beside the bed just in case something _did_ come in to do him a harm, the poor lad was still beset by the worst sort of dreams.

“How ‘bout this?” Thrór asked, flipping to a page that showed an image of a mine, shiny painted jewels lit by the warm glow of torchlight.

“Better,” she admitted. “But you shouldn’t be asking me, ask Fundin and Dóra - and I must say, I don’t remember you taking such troubles when Óin was born. And he’s your nephew.”

“Gróin and Maeva never would’ve let me get away with it,” Thrór shook his head and continued his perusal of the samples.

Dísa snorted. “But Fundin and Dóra will?”

Thrór grinned at her and it was amazing how he could still have the boyish look of mischief down pat, though he was nearing his second century. “Oh, aye. After I did so well with their wedding? They can hardly say a word against it.”

There wasn’t much of an argument she could put up in the face of that logic. In the first place, they’d let him take the reins and happily so too since neither Fundin or Dóra were up for much fuss and Thrór _adored_ fuss. In the second...well, it had been a damned fine party and that was the truth of it. Everything past the second night was a blur to her and she could hold her liquor better than most.

“Aha!” Thrór exclaimed. “Perfect! _Perfect._ That’ll do, don’t you think?”

The picture he’d settled on looked like the interior of the library, though not one as cavernous or labyrinthine as Haldr’s domain. It was a cozy looking place, with books bound in jewel-toned covers. Here and there were painted stands with open volumes, depicting scenes from childhood favorites - here the slaying of the dragon Glaurung, there the tale of Thórgilla the Bold. She had to admit, it wasn’t a bad image to imagine done up wall-sized.

“That’ll do,” she agreed, “ _if_ you get their say-so.”

“I’ll ask them,” Thrór promised, negotiating with the shopgirl as far as price, how quickly the job could be done and when could the painters begin.

“Ask them _before_ the workers turn up,” Dísa advised him.

In matters of warfare, he had a tendency to defer to her without question. But when it came to matters like this, Thrór liked to assert a bit of his kingly authority.

“But that would ruin the surprise,” he protested, innocently.

Dísa snorted and turned away, shaking her head. She didn’t buy that wide-eyed look for an instant. The troublemaker.

It was a pity, she reflected more than once over the years, that Thrór wasn’t a bearing dwarf. But then, she reflected as he leaned over the counter to ask the girl about prices for tapestries and wall-hangings, he might have bled the treasury dry if they had more dwarflings than Thráin running about the place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isn't it better when we talk things out? They set a fine example for the rest of the family. And you folks didn't think we'd get through this part of the story without Thrór sticking his nose (and hand and money) in, did you? Of course not. We all know him far too well.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Some PG-13 het sex stuff at the end of the chapter.

Dóra was in a grumbly sort of mood that didn’t suit her. In the first place, she hated feeling cross - especially when there wasn’t anything in particular to be cross at - and in the second, she didn’t have a voice Made for quietly mumbled grumpiness. It was a high sort of voice that always caught someone’s ear and her pronunciation in whichever tongue she chose to speak was impeccable. 

“Rotten histories,” she muttered, hefting seven thick volumes onto a shelving cart. She hadn’t been quick enough with a bookend and they all went sliding off to the side, the volume numbers staring up at her with an impudent sort of look. “Rotten spines. Rotten pages.”

“Rot?” Gílla asked, alarmed. “We just purchased that last year!”

“No, no,” Dóra hastily assured her. “Just spouting nonsense, pay me no heed.”

But Gílla was reluctant to let the matter drop - it was what made her both a good friend and an incredible gossip. “Is Fundin still feeling a wee bit nervous?”

 

 _More than a wee bit,_ Dóra thought, but when she spoke, opted for tact, “Aye, a little. Not that I blame him...it’s all a bit daunting.”

“Oh, no, don’t say that,” Gílla shook her head. “It’s not daunting, just remember, the little one hasn’t had any parents other than you, so it isn’t as if they’re going to know how well you’re doing.”

Dóra did not feel that this was very good advice. After all, she’d only ever had one set of parents and she was fairly certain that, if held up for marking, raising their children might have been the one test in their lives that they’d ever failed.

Perhaps she was not giving credit enough to her father, felled by a cold drake nearly forty years past. After all, he hadn’t had Dómarra’s tongue for criticism...but then, he hadn’t exactly encouraged her to pursue...oh, anything that he did not enjoy himself. She had a very clear memory of asking him to read to her (her mother never did, once Dóra was twelve, she informed her that she could read to herself), he would only acquiesce if it was a book that he himself enjoyed. She could not go to the theatre unless they were watching something that he specifically wanted to see. And if she was singing to herself while completing her studies and he happened to be nearby, if he didn’t like the tune he would ask her to change it or be silent.

Was that what parents were meant to do? Mould children in their image - or if not in their very image, at least into a creature that was imbued with only characteristics they approved of? Perhaps, if one thought of the raising of children as being akin to any other kind of craft. Certainly Dóra favored certain styles of text render than others, had favorite pens that she used, favorite colors of ink, and so on...but one’s work, though it could come close, was never a living breathing thing with a mind of its own. 

And children so often were nothing like their parents - Thráin might emulate his father in appearance and craft, but the two could not be any more different. But Thrór never attempted to alter him materially in any way. He never tried to force the lad to become more gregarious, he never even told him he ought to smile more. 

Then _again_ , mightn’t Thráin benefit from more encouragement? He was to be King, after all, the people certainly would not be comfortable talking to a king who made it clear that he took no pleasure in their company. 

“Dóra?” 

Gílla waved a hand in front of her face and Dóra smiled nervously. “I was thinking.”

“Worrying, you mean?” the librarian asked knowingly. Before Dóra could reply, she shooed her off, gesturing to the cart. “Go along and get some shelving done, it’s where I do my best fretting.”

 

“I’m not fretting,” Dóra mumbled, but, always happened, her voice carried and she got a reply for her troubles.

“Sure you aren’t.”

Perhaps she wouldn’t be in such a foul mood if she didn’t feel quite so sore. Her back, in particular, had taken to aching if she was a long time on her feet. She did perfectly well at court and in the scriptorium, but working in the library had become something of a chore. Haldr need never fear, though, she had no intention of giving it up, even if she did have to stop ever few minutes and drive her fingers mercilessly into her lower back to get some relief. A trip to the masseur’s might be in order.

“Ah! There you are!”

Dóra had been so lost in thought that she hadn’t heard any footsteps behind her. She let out a yelp and fell back on her bottom, staring up at Haldr who was looming over her looking annoyed.

“Shh!” he said, hitting her on the nose with a rolled up piece of parchment. 

“Apologies,” Dóra replied weakly. She thought she might just stay sitting; the ground wasn’t too uncomfortable and whenever Haldr sought her out at work, it generally meant a long conversation was in order.

And so it seemed to be for he joined her on the floor, unfurling the parchment as he said, “I’ve drawn up some rules.”

“Rules?” Dóra asked, confused. “About what?”

This time when she was swatted, it was on her stomach, though the blow was totally ineffective, the paper having been flattened. _“That._ I don’t like children, you know - ”

“You always say that,” Dóra interrupted, resting a hand lightly upon her stomach, while the other furtively dug into her back. “But I’ve never known you to turn them away when they wander in here - ”

“But as this child is going to be at least partially blood-of-my-blood, I suppose I will have to interact with it,” he continued, as if she hadn’t said anything. 

“That’d be nice,” Dóra opined quietly. 

“Therefore, I’ve drawn up a list of rules that will govern our interactions,” Haldr said, clearing his throat unnecessarily - he was very _loud_ for one who insisted upon shushing anyone who spoke above a whisper in his stacks. “Rule the first - if the child is in any way soiled, with anything spewing from any orifice, I will not be responsible for cleaning it.”

“That’s fine,” Dóra sighed. She ceased trying to ease the ache in her back and instead rested her head on her hand, balancing her elbow upon a shelf. Maybe if it was a long list, she could take a little nap…

“Rule the second,” he went on, “I will not have the child refer to me by any variation on my common name or, indeed, any soubriquet at all. ‘Haldr,’ I am and, ‘Haldr’ I shall be and if they cannot pronounce it properly they shall refer to me as nothing at all. Upon this final point I am prepared to negotiate - would it be possible for the child to refer to me exclusively as, ‘sir’?”

“Afraid not,” Dóra replied, smiling. “It’ll be Uncle Haldr, I’m quite settled on that.”

“I thought you might be,” he sighed, withdrawing a charcoal from behind his ear and crossing something out on the paper. “To continue - I am not a child minder. I refuse to be left as the child’s sole companion prior to its reaching the age of sixty.”

“I think that’s too broad a term,” Dóra shook her head. “What are the parameters? What if I’m only in the next room? What if I’m not about at all, but Gílla or someone else is about? What if the child is sleeping?”

“Sleeping children always wake up,” Haldr replied regretfully. “No, I will bear no argument, I will not be responsible for any injury the child suffers due to neglect for I tell you here and now that I am not competent in this regard.”

“What if - ”

“Sixty.” He glared at her over the top of the paper. “As I said, this is non-negotiable. However, with proper supervision, I am willing to provide the child with some interaction. I feel duty-bound in this regard as I am sure that the only role your idiot husband can provide beyond that of insemination is acting as conveyance - ”

 _“Haldr.”_ His sister’s voice took on a note of steel then and she glared at him from behind her spectacles. “Fundin is going to be a very fine father - now hush, because he thinks he won’t be and I’ll not have you adding fuel to that fire, even from a mile away.”

“Well, you can’t honestly expect me to believe he’s going to imbue the child with valuable knowledge,” Haldr argued. “Save the best way to gut an orc. Which is hardly a skill for an _infant_ , even I know that and I don’t like children.”

“As you keep saying,” Dóra rolled her eyes, patting her belly unconsciously. Poor thing; the way it was going, the one who was unabashedly excited about his birth was Thrór. “Anything else?”

“There are several other articles, but those are my main points,” he thrust the paper at her and she pocketed it without reading further. “Give them a closer examination and when you’re done, return it to me with a signature.”

“A signature?” she asked, incredulously. _“Really?”_

“Really,” he smiled and held out a hand to help her to her feet. “Remember, I’m secret-keeping for you. It’s only right that I reap a reward out of this.”

It was little wonder that the grumpiness persisted into the evening. Dóra glanced over the rest of the paper once she was in the privacy of her own home and its contents did nothing to improve her mood.

**It is herein laid down that Haldr, son of Hallthór, not be expected to imbue the child with what are commonly referred to as ‘life lessons.’ The undersigned Haldr does not agree to act in any way as a model for which his sister’s offspring (that presently unborn and any possible future offspring) to base their behavior. This point is made to underscore the fact that the undersigned Haldr did not at any time consent for his sister to provide him with any next-of-kin, and that the present unborn and any future offspring which may exist, do so regardless of his wishes.**

Dóra put her arms down on the table and buried her face in them. She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t even sad, she was just _exhausted_ and in pain and she wished that someone who was actually related to her would tell her that everything really was going to turn out alright. It was all well and good to hear reassurances from colleagues and friends, but something from family would have been much appreciated. 

It was in this state of tiredness that she agreed to do something totally mad; clearly she was at her wit’s end. She agreed to go swimming.

It was Fundin’s suggestion and she’d taken him up on it out of desperation, clearly. Apparently when his sister was expecting his nephew, she’d gone swimming daily, near the end, to take some of the pressure off her back. Dóra wasn’t near the end, but she was about half Dísa’s size and her bones and muscles weren’t nearly as hefty, so it stood to reason that she might feel a bit better. 

If she didn’t drown. Dóra was no stranger to the public baths, with their stone benches and hot towels and helpful attendants. The pools were nearer the top of the Mountain, deep, laid in with beautiful mosaics - or so she’d heard, given that she’d never had cause to go near them. She did not swim, had never learned how because she was not a _fish_ and therefore had no reason to learn.

This seemed to astonish Fundin who was always astonished when it was revealed that his wife had not been raised as if she might suddenly have to go aboveground and life amongst Men. No horseback riding for her, nor camping in the wilderness, or voluntarily submerging oneself in water over one’s head. To be fair, she was equally astonished when she learned of yet another book in the literary canon that Fundin had never encountered, but there were _six_ libraries in Erebor. And one did not have to risk one’s health to enter them.

It was dark, the room lit by torchlight, though there was a shaft that would have admitted sunlight during the daylight hours. It had the look of a cave, which made Dóra feel slightly better, but the constant lapping of deep water made her nervous.

“D’you know,” she began, “I don’t think this is - “

But Fundin was shucking his clothes off and her throat went very dry, all at once. It had been _ages_ since she’d seen him properly bare - since that night he decided that she was too much made of cotton fluff and tin to go to bed with - and she thought, if this was to be the last thing she ever saw, it wasn’t such a terrible sight to go out on. 

“Come on,” Fundin said, extending a hand. “Give it half a minute - if you don’t feel better, we can go back.”

Dóra took a deep breath - as if she was about to just jump into the pool, though she was only taking her clothes off. It was a warm night and she didn’t shiver when her things were drawn off. She did hear Fundin swallow, quite audibly and when she looked up at him she saw that he was looking her over quite longingly. And then she felt her throat and cheeks heat up as she blushed. 

“I’ll go first,” Fundin said abruptly, then _jumped_ into the pool, water spraying everywhere, prompting Dóra to yelp and hop awkwardly away. When he stood, she realized that the water only went up to his waist and she felt slightly less apprehensive - not over her head, then, that was a positive thing. Holding out his arms to her, Fundin said, “Come on, it’s warm.”

Clearly he expected her to just take a flying leap, as he had done, but Dóra hadn’t her husband’s sense of adventure. She walked slowly to the edge of the pool. Then sat down on the edge. Then she dangled her feet in and counted to thirty.

“Eh, feels the same,” she said, trying to scoot back, but Fundin caught her round the ankle. When he smiled at her, it was very kind, slightly teasing. It was a look she’d not seen of late on his face and one she’d missed very much. 

“You’ve got to get _in_ the water,” he said. “Come along, then, you’ll be fine, this side’s the shallow bit.”

He snaked an arm around her waist and tutted at her. The ends of his beard were wet and pressed against her thigh. “I won’t let anything happen to you - not that anything _could_ happen to you, so it’s a promise easily kept.”

Despite her nerves, Dóra knew she was just being silly. Steadying herself with a hand braced on Fundin’s arm, she let him draw her into the water. And after a momentary panic, stood up on her own and - oh. _Oh._ Well, that was delightful.

Not only did the tension in her back ease, her hips suddenly felt light as air all of a sudden, she hadn’t even realized how much they’d been strained by the weight of the child in her womb - but of course, they _would_ have been, wouldn’t they?

 

“Ah,” Fundin sighed, satisfied. _“There’s_ a smile that’s worth all the torments above and below the earth to see. I missed it.”

“I missed you,” Dóra said, abruptly, speaking without meaning to - what was this place that it loosened her muscles and her tongue...granted, her tongue hardly needed loosening, but even so. “I’ve...truly missed you.”

Fundin looked down at her and she tilted her head up, rose onto her toes expectantly. She wasn’t in danger of losing her balance, but she lay a hand on his chest in any case. He covered her small fingers with his own and kissed her, softly, at first, but with growing passion.

When she came up for breath, Dóra thought she was going to seriously have to reconsider her opinion of pools and deep water in general. They were the most _useful_ sort of things.

“Are you - ”

“Feeling perfectly well,” she said, guiding Fundin with a hand on his hip. The pool’s floor was slanted, with a small lip that came out of the wall if a swimmer wanted a rest. She used it to her full advantage, positioning him so that they were more on a level. Water lapped over her stomach, soaking the ends of her beard and breasts and she pulled one of Fundin’s hands up to touch her. “Hearty and hale and all that. And I have missed you.”

“Right,” he said gruffly, pulling her close without any of the tentative fear that had so marked their interactions in the past months. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“Are you very sorry?” she asked, her grave tone and expression somewhat marred by her smile.

“Oh, aye,” he said, nodding seriously. “Willing to make restitution.”

“This isn’t a private pool,” she reminded him, but she heard no approaching footsteps, just the gentle lap of water and her husband’s own breathing. 

“Eh,” Fundin shrugged his shoulders and grinned at her. “No reward without risk, eh?”

Dóra laughed out loud and kissed him. “Just as you say!”

Later, when they were nearly dry, full of giggles, and trying very hard to make it back to their home without drawing too much attention, Dóra reflected that she was going to throw her brother’s contract on the fire and order him to draw up a new one. He was quite wrong in his assessment of her espoused - Fundin, when it came right down to it, was a _genius._


	33. Chapter Four

There was a definite spring in Fundin’s step for the next few weeks. Who would’ve thought that one little pool of water would solve so many problems? Dóra felt better, _he_ felt better - really, as far as Fundin was concerned his own welfare was an afterthought when it came to hers, but he couldn’t deny that the little romp had been a benefit to both of them.

“Well, look who’s here!” Loni cried cheerfully as Fundin entered the gymnasium. “It’s Fundin! All these weeks I’ve thought, ‘Ah, there’s Gróin come again and cut my beard if he doesn’t look taller.’”

“I’m not _that_ grey,” Fundin muttered, rolling his eyes.

“It’s not grey that’s the problem, it’s how _grave_ you’ve been,” Loni informed him. “Hardly like a dwarf expecting a child - there’s a stockpile of things for the wee mite in my rooms, by the bye, so don’t worry about providing...anything. Between my mothers and my sisters, you’ve clothes and toys enough for ten dwarflings, if you and Dóra get ambitious.”

“Ha,” Fundin laughed hollowly. “Sure. Ten. I think the last time a dwarf under this rock had more than five my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was on the throne.”

“Well, now, there’s no need to brag,” Loni winked. “What’re you calling the little one? Oh, I’ll bet is something ridiculous dragged out of the depths of the archives - let’s see now, Telchar’s just vaunted enough, isn’t he?”

“We haven’t discussed it,” Fundin mumbled so quietly Loni asked him to repeat himself.

His friend’s eyes went wide and he dropped the weights he was holding, narrowly missing squashing Fundin’s toes in the process. “You two don’t do anything, timely, do you? ‘Cept courting - Dóra’s an awful influence on you, you know.”

“It’s nearly six months off, we’ve time,” Fundin said, unwilling to impart the reason that there had been little discussion of names was because he’d never made a move to begin one. He supposed that they could just do what his family ordinarily did when it came to the naming of children - grab a genealogy off the shelf, close your eyes and flip open to a page and point - but Dóra would probably want more thought put in.

Anyway, it was inner names that were the trouble. Fundin wouldn’t know where to begin - it wasn’t as though they’d know anything about the child’s real nature when it first came into the world. At the moment, the only thing he could think of was **One who kicks soundly,** for poor Dóra was having a rotten time sleeping nights.

Still, she bore it pleasantly as anyone could - Fundin certainly had no idea what it would be like, having something rearranging your innards as it chose. Dísa made childbearing sound like the worst sort of thing a body could go through. She always said she’d rather take the broad side of an orc-axe to the head than go through all that trouble again.

Dóra _was_ sweeter tempered than his sister though. And for all the trouble the babe caused, she seemed to find the experience brought its own joys - some that she tried to share.

_“Oh, come here,” she exclaimed, just the night before. She’d been sitting on the sofa, using her belly as a bookstand and Fundin, thinking she must be in some distress, practically leapt to her side._

_Rather than informing him of some trouble or other, she silently took his hand and lay it on the side of her stomach. Fundin was just about to ask her what the matter was when he felt a strange little thump under his palm, as if he was being nudged._

_“That’s queer,” Fundin announced, before he could come up with something more profound to say._

_Dóra laughed, “Isn’t it? Queerer when it’s coming from the inside, but...well.”_

_“That’s ours, then?” Fundin went on, like an idiot. The babe moved again and he did not take his hand away. Strange that before it was even born it was moving about, could be felt. He knew babies kicked their bearers inside, but he’d never had the chance to feel it for himself - his sister probably would have smacked him if he tried to get a feel._

_“Mmm,” Dóra nodded. Then, with a bit of mischief said, “Well, I _hope_ so. Otherwise this is very awkward.”_

_Fundin rolled his eyes and kissed her. “Something you ate that didn’t go down easy.”_

_“Aye,” she nodded._

“Fundin.”

She’d looked so sweet and lovely, he couldn’t help kissing her again, after that, the evening got away from both of them -

“Fundin!”

He blinked suddenly and rather than Dóra’s lovely face he found Loni staring up at him, smiling insufferably smugly.

“Ah, you’ve settled on it, then - you’re going to name the child for me!” he said. “Well, I heartily approve. I think it’s a fine choice - ”

“Ah, go boil your head,” Fundin said good-naturedly. “If we name the babe for anyone it’d be you last of all.”

Loni sq uawked indignantly for about five minutes thereafter, but Fundin pretended to be working too hard to hear him. Later, he cheerfully beat the stuffing out of him with weighted practice sticks for another hour until it was suppertime. Curiously, he didn’t spy Dóra in the dining hall, though she’d made the effort to be more regular in her eating habits recently.

Fundin found her at her desk in the room she’d commandeered as her study shortly after their marriage. Most days he didn’t cross the threshold since it made him anxious. Aye. Anxious.

The room was a _mess_ and that was putting it mildly. There were shelves for books, but many of them were piled on the floor in teetering stacks with shelves of parchment in between. There was a small barricade of scrolls around the desk, some rolled, some not, with inkwells and quills taking up any little spot of available space.

His time in the Guard taught him punctuality and neatness, not two things that were emphasized in the scriptorium. Dóra claimed the clutter help her think and it really was just that - clutter. Organized clutter, apparently, but Fundin didn’t see it. And neither did Dóra - often he heard articulate swearing from behind the door when she’d “just put the damned thing down,” and it, “couldn’t bloody well have grown legs and taken a walk.”

“Busy?” Fundin asked, poking just his head in - he was less likely to trod on something important if he kept his feet on the other side of the treshold.

Dóra was sitting at her desk, but she wasn’t writing. She seemed to be staring at the wall with her head on her hands. “Oh!” she exclaimed, straightening when she noticed Fundin. “No! No, come in - or...sorry, let me clear you a path - ”

“Don’t get up,” he said, concerned that she would do herself a harm trying to pick her way toward him. “I was just looking for you, you weren’t at supper.”

“Supper’s over?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. Of course, it wasn’t, food was produced in the kitchens at all hours since the Mountain never slept, but some hours were busier than others and after the evening dinner rush, it would be leftovers of cold breads and meats until hot fare was brought up for those who worked through the night. “Oh. Well. That’s a good three hours wasted.”

“What’re you working on?” Fundin asked, assuming it would be something he wouldn’t understand, but it was polite to inquire and Dóra always made her work sound interesting even if it was incomprehensible.

“Letter to my mother.”

“Never mind.”

Fundin was willing to let Dóra prattle on about any topic under or over the earth that she was interested in, but he could not feign interest in hearing about her mother. He’d _tried_ appealing to Dómarra when she came to Erebor...well, no, she had not come for the wedding, she’d just come to Erebor and she made it very clear that she did not give a tinker’s damn about her daughter’s happiness and that set Fundin against her from now ‘til the world was made new. Dóra still wrote to her dutifully, every few months and he assumed she heard back, but he didn’t want to be privy to the conversation. He almost backed out of the doorway when she said.

“It’sonlythatIhaven’texactlymentionedthechildtoher.”

It took him a moment to parse that, but when he did, he opened the door wider, knocking a few books aside as he did. “Not yet? I knew you were waiting, but - ”

“I think I’ve left it took long,” Dóra frowned. “I don’t know when I thought the right time would be, but I think it’s passed me by. If the raven miscarries, then the babe’ll _be_ here by the time she finds out, I think she’ll be offended.”

“Dóra, your mother’s always offended,” Fundin pointed out. “Just...keep it simple.”

“A post-script, you mean?” Dóra looked up at him and smiled. “‘As a matter of interest, if you happen to come by and a little lad or lass calls you ‘umad,’ that one’s mine.’”

“Sounds good,” Fundin nodded, carefully making his way across the room to stand by the desk. He saw the letter was well-begun, but only about matters of script and scholarship, at least that was what he saw from a cursory glance. “What’s the babe think of the matter?”

“Gone still,” Dóra said, prodding at her stomach a little. “I think he’s as nervous about it as I am.”

“Ah, good,” Fundin replied. “Got your sense, then, that’s what I wanted.”

“Oh, hush,” she laughed, picking up her quill again. “I think I’ve...well, ‘I know you’ve much to do, so in the interest of keeping our correspondence brief, I just want to inform you that Fundin and I are expecting a child soon.’ How’s that?”

It was like a different dwarf entirely was the one set out on paper. Fundin never heard _his_ Dóra, her laughter and her humor when she wrote. To be sure she sounded clever - and she was clever - but especially in her letters to her mother, that seemed to be all she was. He knew it was all her mother wanted from her and so it was good enough for her.

“Sounds right,” he said, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. “Come along, we’ll take a trip to the aviary and make up for your lost supper, eh?”

“That’s an excellent plan,” Dóra replied, taking hold of Fundin’s hand and leaning her head against his arm.

“Well, I’m not a bad strategist, if I do say so myself.”

* * *

 

“Fall in.”

Thrór gave the order and the troops were soon in motion. Just as soon as Fundin and Dóra rounded the corner and set off for the evening - sure to be gone for a good few hours, the dining hall wouldn’t have anything worth eating, they’d have to go out and why shouldn’t they indulge themselves? - the troops moved in, infiltrating the house under Thrór’s watchful eye.

Dísa was his accomplice in this, but she only went as far as to open the door for the hoard of decorators and painters he had employed to ready the nursery. She spent the rest of the evening lounging on the sofa playing cards against herself.

“Who’s winning?” Thrór called down from the balcony cheerfully as he ran an empty can of paint to be thrown out; he was treading a fine line between being helpful and being in the way and so appointed himself the master of any rubbish left behind from the surprise.

“Me,” Dísa replied evenly. “I’ve got the high ground - I’m closer to the door so if either of them throws a fit, I can be on my way.”

“They’re neither of them fit-throwers,” Thrór lobbed the can at her head and she caught it, one-handed, then set it down on the floor. “Just remember, when they love it, you aren’t to take any credit.”

“I let you in, violated their privacy,” she started ticking off her offenses on the hand that caught the paint. “If Fundin did the same at the Gates, it’d be more than a flogging offense.”

“That depends on who he was letting in and for what purpose,” Thrór replied patiently. “If it was my Name Day and you’d let in some chocolatier from Dale to make a three-foot statue of my head in chocolate and oranges, I’d actually be very happy - and that’s something to consider, my next Name Day’s coming on soon…”

Dísa snorted and went back to her cards. Three foot statue of his head. She’d make a three-foot statue of her left foot for his Name Day if he carried on being absurd.

But she _had_ let him in. He was just so damned excited, it was hard to say him nay. If they didn’t like it, they could commission someone to paint over it. She’d pay for it, even. Maybe she was too much of a soft touch where Thrór was concerned, certainly she’d have been _furious_ if someone had come into their quarters and rearranged things, claiming they were doing her a favor. But then, she was a different sort of dwarf than Fundin and Dóra. As Thrór said, they weren’t fit-throwers and she’d made something of a career of throwing fits professionally. It was just that hers came outfitted with spears, knives, and arrows.

That was a thought. Maybe the wee one ought to have a mobile with a few little axes spinning round. She’d have to see if she could commission one.

The contracted dwarves were cleared out when she heard one or the other of them fumbling with the lock and her brother’s voice saying, “I’m sure I locked it behind - oh. Evening, Dísa.”

Before he could follow up with, ‘What are you doing here?’ she got up and took hold of both their arms, leading them up the stairs.

“It wasn’t my idea,” was all she said before the door of the room nearest the master bedroom was thrown open and Thrór stood there beaming at all of them.

“I hope you like it!” he said, taking both Fundin and Dóra away from his wife and dragging them in behind him.

The whole room smelled of wet paint and Dísa wrinkled her nose. The plasterwork had been freshly painted and sections of the wall still gleamed in the torchlight. Fundin’s old cradle had been found from whatever room it had been shunted into when her brother outgrew it, the mattress newly stuffed and a new quilt with a blue and gold patchwork pattern laid atop it. There was a rocking chair, gleaming mahogany, set in the corner as well as one of those little gated pens that Dísa thought resembled nothing less than dungeon cells to put the tiny ones in with a few toys when they were being annoying. A bearskin rug (head, arms, and legs removed so little ones couldn’t cut themselves on sharp bits) ‘tied the whole room together’ - at least that was what they were told when they purchased it.

There was room for a mobile over the cot. Dísa mentally noted that and folded her arms, looking from Fundin to Dóra, both of whom were gawping with their mouths hanging open. Dóra recovered first.

“Oh, it’s _wonderful!”_ she exclaimed, throwing herself at Thrór whose arms were already open for an embrace. “Thank you! A thousand times! Oh, it’s better than anything I could have come up with, look at the walls! How charming!”

“S’nice,” Fundin agreed with a small smile. “Did...did this all go on while we were out? Or have you been sneaking workers in for ages?”

“All in one!” Thrór said, embracing him, unwilling to let the evening pass without being hugged by both of his grateful kinsfolk. “Had to be quick, but luckily, I had inside aid so we didn’t have to break the lock.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Dísa denied. “I was against the whole thing.”

Dóra’s eyes were awfully wet when she got on tip-toe and thanked Dísa as well.

“Don’t thank me,” she said, patting the lass on the head. “I always think it’s best form not to sneak about...but, just being curious...d’you want a mobile for the cot?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's time for the little guy to come on the scene, don't you?


	34. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning for assigned at birth gender language.**

This fact might surprise no one, but Halldóra did not like waiting. It was one of the few benefits of constantly running late; everything was well underway by the time she got there. Unfortunately, the last quarter of her pregnancy consisted entirely of waiting in an increasing state of discomfort.

Surely the baby felt the same. After all, he was the one who was rapidly running out of any place to go. She might mentally cringe every time she noticed that squeezing in behind her desk comfortably was becoming a problem, but _he_ was the one who was crammed in her womb with absolutely no place to go. Didn’t he want to escape those confines?

Not quickly enough to suit her, apparently. Maeva seemed pleased as punch every time Dóra paid her a call, said things were progressing nicely and that it was all going according to schedule. The little one ought to be, “right on time.”

Dóra only hoped that he did not emulate his mother’s sense of “on time.” She’d not had a good night’s sleep in weeks and when she did wake, it was with an aching back and a stiff neck from unconsciously holding a comfortable position so long that it became uncomfortable.

Still, there were nice things that went along with it. Presents, anyway, and such an array of tiny gowns, tunics, trousers, and soft little boots that would make even the biggest grump smile to see them. Most were from her colleagues in the library and the scriptorium, the clothes, anyway. Fundin’s friends were, generally, more eager to purchase toys. There were now several shelves’ worth of puzzles, building blocks, rubber balls, rattles, a dollhouse in the shape of a smithy and weaponsmith shop, and accompanying dolls and stuffed toys, including an absolutely darling bear that currently resided in the unoccupied cradle.

Sometimes, when it was late and she couldn’t sleep, she’d slip out of bed and take a walk around the room. She tried to imagine what it might be like when the little one was born, what he’d look like, sleeping beneath the quilt in the cot, but she couldn’t quite picture it. No child’s face came to mind, just a vague impression of a small body with dark hair.

“Come along,” she’d whisper in what she hoped was a coaxing manner, “we’re all so eager to meet you.”

Not soon enough Maeva’s predictions narrowed from, “Within the next few weeks,” to “any day now,” until the morning when Dóra woke, feeling vaguely ill with what she thought was a bad stomachache until that evening when the pain came more regularly, and more intensely.

Fundin wanted to fetch Maeva at once, but Dóra said she likely wouldn’t come even if he did make the journey to her office. “She said first babes can take _days_ ,” Dóra said, gritting her teeth against a sudden cramping tightness - not so very bad now, only what she experienced just before her usual bleeding was upon her, though she knew it was only going to get worse and begged off library duty for the next day.

Not two hours later there was a furious knocking on the door and Haldr stood upon the threshold, with five books tucked under his arm.

“I hope you’ve ordered food,” he said to Fundin who stepped aside to let him pass. Then, Haldr made himself at home on their sofa and opened the first of his books, adjusting his spectacles on the end of his nose as he did.

Fundin had, in fact, ordered foot. Awaiting the birth of a child was more than a family affair. Naturally, Thrór and Dísa made an appearance, though they excused themselves several times during the next four days of waiting; the Mountain could not stop running even if a child was being born. So too came Thráin who immediately endeared himself to Haldr by borrowing one of his books, though he read it very slowly, pausing whenever it became too quiet as his eyes anxiously scanned the room looking for Dóra.

Dóra smiled reassuringly at him every time he set eyes on her; for the first two days she felt perfectly well, for the contractions of her womb were extremely protracted; she might go two hours feeling no pain at all. Maeva checked on her regularly, but spent much of her time in her sister-in-law’s room socializing. Dwarven births were of long duration and first children were notoriously slow.

“This is the best bit,” Dísa said, more than once, when she was about. Indeed, for her it had been; after more than a year of her body playing host to a not-entirely-welcome guest, laboring to bring him into the world was no trouble at all. Pain she could manage and happily so; childbearing wasn’t so awful as an axe-wound and quicker to recover from than a broken bone.

“The best bit,” Dóra echoed with a tight smile and a tighter squeeze of Fundin’s arm when the pain was upon her. “Right.”

Fundin’s vocabulary underwent a dramatic reduction during this process. Never one to speak overmuch in company, the only thing anyone heard out of him for more than half a week was a muttered, “Alright?” always directed at Dóra.

For the most part, she was alright. Well, alright as she could be, considering. By the third night they adjourned to the bedroom, though Maeva was strictly opposed to Dóra lying down - it would slow the process down even longer and, though she was fairly exhausted, Dóra thought it better to have it all over and done with as quickly as possible.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Maeva said, as Dóra rode another contract - coming quickly together now, no more than fifteen minutes apart. “Not that it’s a bad thing! All the hollering and swearing in the world doesn’t make a babe come faster.”

“Who knew birthing a child would be the one thing in the world that’d close your mouth?” Haldr asked. Dóra opened her mouth enough to suggest that he might be happier outside, but he said he was perfectly content where he was - and immediately busied himself with another book.

“How much longer?” Dóra asked.

“Depends,” Maeva replied, “but if you aren’t holding a wee lad or lassie in your arms by tomorrow night, I’ll be very surprised.”

It _was_ the next night, when the sun had set on Erebor and the torches burned on the Gate for two hours that, with a sharp cry from his mother and a deep inhale from his father, a baby boy came into the world, bloody, wailing, and very much loved.

A great cheer echoed out of the bedroom, down the stairs and continued in the sitting room so loudly that cries of, “Muhudel!” could be heard by dwarves passing on the street outside.

Mother and son were tidied up a bit, but even before the little one was wrapped up snug and warm in a soft blanket, there was a crush at the door that was made of several stout bodies and flailing arms that wanted to be the very first to hold the little fellow.

Dóra received that honor, of course. She’d held him with trembling arms as Maeva cut the cord that connected them and delivered the afterbirth, but it all seemed slightly surreal. Like the moment when a long treatise was finished, the final penstroke made and rather than feeling a sense of accomplishment, she looked at the sheaves of parchment, ready to be sent to the printers and merely thought, _I did all that? Huh._

So it was with the child - whose common name, they finally decided, would be Balin. _This is mine? Really. How interesting._ If she could have put her exhausted thoughts into words, that was what she would have said - only she didn’t say a thing she just sniffled since tears had come to her eyes and she couldn’t articulate why _that_ was either.

Maeva pronounced him a healthy lad, very fine and Dóra found, as she looked at him from the vantage point of her bed, her sweaty hair and beard tied out of her face, that this seemed to be very true.

He’d stopped crying - squalling really, a thin, plaintive sound. His little mouth was closed and he seemed to be asleep. His eyes were closed, but they were framed with dark, wet eyelashes that matched the dark hair plastered down to his head. On his cheeks were sparce little strands, but she was too tired to see if he - if _Balin_ \- had inherited her hair color or his father’s.

He was such a little fellow - not nearly as large as she was expecting given how big her belly was before she’d birthed him. He fitted quite neatly in one of her arms, though she used both to hold him, just in case. He had a little button nose and very red cheeks and round little ears and, oh, he was just about the most lovely, darling child she’d ever seen. And all hers - well. Not quite all hers.

Beaming, Dóra looked up at Fundin who was hovering over her shoulder, staring at their son.

“Here you are!” she exclaimed brightly. “Isn’t he sweet? I think he quite favors you.”

“Got her voice back,” Haldr muttered. Fundin was blocking her view, but he sounded as if he was directly behind him.

“Oh, hush,” Dóra tutted, lifting the baby a little higher so that his father might hold him. “Go on, he’s such a little doll, isn’t he?”

 

He certainly was. Fundin was quite sure that many of the dolls and toys that had been given as playthings were bigger than this son of his. A son. A child. His child and he was even more taken aback than Dóra had been.

A sharp poke in the back urged him to pick up the child.

“Go on,” Haldr said, sound like he was miles away. “Before the king breaks the door down.”

Dóra was beaming and pale and pretty and without consciously thinking of it, Fundin let her place the child in his arms. He hardly dared breathe as she did it, worried that one wrong move would harm the precious, delicate little thing.

Gílla offered to let him borrow her own youngest son, ‘for practice,’ but Fundin demurred. Now he was torn between thinking that he ought to have taken her up on the offer and believing that he couldn’t have been well-prepared by the experience. Gílla’s lad was almost three years old, fat and able to sit up on his own and put anything he got his hands on in his mouth. Fundin likely could have held this baby very securely in his two cupped hands. As it was, the little one was practically invisible in his father’s arms, shielded from view completely, just a round little face, with a mouth that opened, pink and toothless.

Fundin tensed, sure the child was going to scream. But his face just scrunched up - a yawn, then. And his eyes opened to puffy little slits. Fundin exhaled and Maeva called from across the room, “Well done! I was about to have Haldr thump you so you didn’t faint.”

“I could do,” he said, tugging on Fundin’s arm. “Let me see, damn it, I didn’t leave the library to burn in my absence for nothing - aha. Well, let’s hope he’s got the eyesight to go with them,”

“Oh, does he have blue eyes?” Dóra asked eagerly. “He wouldn’t show me - come, Fundin, sit down.”

 

“Before you fall down,” Maeva advised.

Haldr gave Fundin a little nudge for the bed and it was good luck that Dóra managed to scoot out of the way in a timely manner, otherwise Fundin might have sat on her. All her energy was quite renewed and she leaned against her husband’s shoulder, smiling down at the baby who allowed her the privilege of seeing a flash of blue before he closed his eyes again.

“May you never need spectacles,” she said, giving the baby a feather-light kiss on his little wrinkled forehead.

Fundin swallowed thickly, his eyes were burning. And wouldn’t that be just the thing, to cry in front of everyone? Dóra squeezed his arm and smiled at him again. Fundin tried to smile back, but he felt his lip tremble and she saw it. Dóra craned her neck up and he kissed her, grateful for the chance not to have to say anything. There weren’t any words to describe what he was feeling.

Then one dwarf managed to detach himself from the stampede at the doorway. “Let me hold him!” Thrór implored; he might have been a fifteen-year-old on his Name Day, begging for a treat. “Let me hold him!”

“Excuse me,” Haldr said, bending his knees slightly to block Thrór from getting close to the bed. A hollow gesture, really, Thrór was inches taller and twice as broad as he was. “I’m the uncle.”

“I’m an uncle!” Thrór cried, affronted. “Two minutes, that’s all I ask!”

“Don’t give in!” Dísa warned them from the doorway; she was at the back of the crowd, easily a head taller than everyone else. “You’ll never see him again!”

“Oh, hush!” Thrór turned back to shout at her and Haldr used the momentary distraction for his advantage. He carefully snatched Balin up and held him for all of thirty seconds.

“Right, that’s done,” he said, turning to Thrór. “Your turn.”

“That’s it?” Thrór asked, amazed. “You’re not giving him up already.”

“I held him, my duty’s done, I’m leaving before I get pissed on,” Haldr replied, depositing the child in Thrór’s outstretched hands. “Well done, sister. Congratulations, idiot brother-in-law. If anyone wants me, I’ll be in the library.”

With a kiss for Dóra and a handshake for Fundin, Haldr, brandishing his book, raised it threateningly until a small gap allowed him to pass through the waiting kin and well-wishers.

Thrór was smiling from ear to ear. He kissed Balin as well, to Fundin’s momentary alarm - what if the child smothered in his beard? - and cooed over what a lovely child he was.

Dóra took her attention away from Fundin when she spied Thráin, staring at the scene before him with wide-eyes, like someone who’d come in to the middle of a battle and wasn’t sure whether he ought to join in. She waved him over and he obeyed, with a stiff-legged gait.

“That was...er...disgusting, actually,” Thráin observed and Dóra laughed.

“Well, he’s looking much better now - Thrór, let Thráin have a chance to hold his cousin,” she asked. It was lucky she did, if it hadn’t been his own son standing by, Thrór likely would have tried to pull rank, making up some sort of ridiculous claim that being touched by a king was lucky.

“Oh, no,” Thráin began, but neither Dóra, nor his father was about to let him refuse. The baby was laid in his arms very securely. Thráin looked at Dóra, then at Fundin (then back at Dóra, perceiving that Fundin would be no help at the moment), panicking, but the baby was still again.

“Balin,” Dóra said cordially, “this is Thráin. Thráin, this is Balin. I’m sure you two will be great friends.”

Thráin smiled, a little, a small smirk more than anything, but he took a deep breath and didn’t give Balin to another until he was specifically requested to.

At least a dozen more dwarves held the child in his first hour upon the earth, with dozens more following in the coming days before his Name Day, to be held on the eighth day after his birth. In those first eight days, Dóra and Fundin got into a sort of routine - not sleeping very much, eating somewhat haphazardly and spending long exhausted minutes just watching Balin as he slept. A little gown of white with an accompanying cap were commissioned and sewed by Irpa, who’d fitted Dóra’s wedding clothes. She also delivered it, not so much out of a desire to be cordial, but more out of a desire to hold Balin as she pretended to check for fit.

“I think it’ll be just fine,” Dóra said slyly, as Irpa hugged the baby gently against her shoulder, fussing with the hem of the gown. “He’s not likely to grow much in two days.”

“Does he need a pair of little boots, do you think?” Irpa asked, toying with his tiny toes. “I think he does. I’ll make some, may I borrow him to do the fitting? I’ll have him back...oh, in a year or two, when he’s stopped being so dear.”

“Oh, he’ll never stop being dear, I’m sure,” Dóra said confidently. “He’s the dearest thing I’ve ever known.”

She’d put the kettle on for coffee and was pouring the hot water into the press when a messenger came with a knock on the door. He was all out of breath and his beard was coming loose from its plaits.

“The Queen…” he gasped. “Told me to come running...said you had to be told before you...found out otherwise. Your mother...the Lady Dómarra’s...just arrived from the Iron Hills.”


	35. Chapter 35

Fundin’s first, irrational thought, was that it would not be difficult to _hide_ Balin until his mother-in-law went away. He was very small. He could fit in a bread box. He might not be very comfortable, but it would be for his own good.

His second, slightly more rational thought, was, _She had to come and spoil this too._

It wasn’t enough that she’d driven Dóra to frazzled distraction before their wedding day, it wasn’t enough that she’d tried to convince her to leave off courting him, no, no, she couldn’t let well enough alone, she had to come and ruin the baby’s Name Day as well. At least, he assumed that was her aim in coming. Their acquaintance was not long or deep, but Fundin fancied he understood her well enough. Well enough to know that there wasn’t a chance that Dómarra would value Dóra’s happiness over and above her own disappointment. 

“We can’t bar the door,” Dóra sighed wistfully.

“I’ll just stand in front of it,” Fundin said. He was holding Balin against his shoulder, the lad seemed to like falling asleep there and was quick to wake if they tried to move him again before he’d well and truly drifted off. “Pretend I don’t hear her knocking, lean up against the door a bit. That should keep her out.”

“You can’t do the same at temple,” Dóra lamented. She was laying beside him on the couch, leaning against him, her eyes half-closed. “All dwarrow-kind being welcome. Besides, you’ve got to hold him for the blessings - ”

“I’ll just hold him in front of the doors,” Fundin said. “The juzrâl can just...aim the oil at me. Some of it’s bound to splash him.”

His wife looked up and smiled at him, “You always know just what to do - but really, we can’t just...no, we _can’t_ refuse to see her. And I’m sure she’s cross with me, having left off telling her so long.”

“Well, maybe she ought to have made herself worth telling,” Fundin said, disgruntled. Dóra favored him with a reproachful look and he rolled his eyes. “You’re far better to her than she deserves.”

“She’s my _mother_ ,” Dóra said patiently, as she’d said a thousand times before. “And...well, childbirth isn’t easy. I owe her the courtesy of attention, at least. I shouldn’t - well, how would you feel if Balin blocked the doors against us and didn’t let us see our first grandchild?”

“I think it’s _far_ too early to think on such things,” Fundin replied confidently. “In the first place. In the second, there’s not a thing you could do that’d give him cause to bar the door against you. Now, _me_ on the other hand - ” 

“Stuff and nonsense,” Dóra sniffed. “Look at him, he adores you already. And quite right.”

Fundin smiled at Dóra and she got up on her knees to give him a kiss so that he didn’t have to move and wake Balin. He’d lost a bit of his nerves where the baby was concerned over the past week, but he still wasn’t sure the lad’s constitution was up to sudden movements or swift rising. Loud noises either, but that couldn’t be helped - even when he was whispering, he had the kind of voice that could be heard clear across the Mountain. 

“Do you want to put him down now?” Dóra asked softly, stroking the little swirl of hair at the back of Balin’s head.

“Nah,” Fundin replied.

She grinned at him, looking so beautiful and so happy that he wished he could have a portrait painted of her, looking just as she was now. Dóra would object, claim the circles under her eyes oughtn’t be recorded, that she should brush her hair and braid her beard, but Fundin couldn’t imagine her looking lovelier, not even on their wedding day when she’d been so polished up that she shone like gold. He hadn’t thought he could love anyone as much as he loved Dóra and he’d been proved wrong twice over. In the first place, he loved Balin at least that much and in the second, he was sure that he’d come to love his wife more at the end of this week than he had at the beginning. 

Closing her eyes, Dóra lay her head against his unoccupied arm and Fundin thought, _This is perfect._ Would that it could stay that way. 

“Do you have guard duty this evening?” Dóra asked, unexpectedly. Fundin was sure she was asleep.

“I did, but Loni offered to take it for me,” Fundin replied. “I’m all yours. He did it in exchange for being allowed to spoil Balin when he’s old enough for sweets.”

Dóra laughed sleepily. “There we are. I think there are enough dwarves under the earth who want the best for him, they should dilute my mother’s influence, don’t you think?”

Fundin only smiled and wrapped his free arm around her shoulders. Dóra’s eyes were still closed so she didn’t see him grimace as he thought about it. Dómarra might be so toxic a poison that all the well-meaning dwarves in the world mightn’t be enough to take all her sting out. But it could be Dóra was right, she was Balin’s grandmother, they couldn’t very well stop her seeing him at all. And there was a chance - however miniscule - that she might be taken enough with him that she wouldn’t be awful. 

Evidently, Balin's arrival had so filled him with joy that it had utterly decimated his rationality.

It was the eve of Balin’s Name Day that Dómarra’s decided to grace her daughter and son-in-law with a visit, though only one of them was home at the time. Dóra had popped out for a minute to go down to the library to retrieve a few law books she needed to round out a section on policy that was in the process of being approved by Thrór - some changes in the language would clarify the passage, she meant to offer a few suggestions. Balin was asleep when his grandmother arrived and there was only Fundin who remained to answer the door; he had been coming in from training when Dóra was going out and he was in full armor when he greeted her. 

To be fair, it wasn’t much of a greeting. “Good - ” he began, but she cut him off and inquired coolly, “Well, where is he?”

“Er. Sleeping,” Fundin replied awkwardly, rallying once more for polite inquiry. “How was your - ”

Dómarra pushed past him, very businesslike. “Which room?”

Fundin told her and followed her up the stairs, clanking a little as he went. Dómarra turned round to glare at him, as if _he_ was the one intruding. All his previous optimism drained away quickly, but he tried not to allow his annoyance to show on his face. She’d only just arrived, after all. 

“Here?” she asked before pushing open the nursery door and striding in. Fundin was left standing on the threshold for she did not immediately cross to the cot, but blocked the way, staring around at the room and wrinkling her nose distastefully. “How much did you pay for this?”

For one long, uncomfortable moment, Fundin was absolutely sure that she was talking about Balin and he wondered what she could possibly mean. “Er…” he started, sounding like a dolt, until he realized she was talking about the mural. “It was a gift.”

 

Dómarra shot him a very vexed look over her shoulder. “Well, I would not count the dwarf who so burdened you as a friend. You’ll have a terrible time scrubbing it off when he’s grown tired of it. They aren’t infants forever, you know.”

“Really?” Fundin asked, grinding his teeth. “I didn’t know - and it was King Thrór who commissioned it, I don’t know that I can think of a better friend.”

It was evidently the wrong thing to say. The expression on Dómarra’s face, which previously held a sort of long-suffering exasperation, turned positively venomous. “You wouldn’t. I shouldn’t think so, no. Not _you.”_

Fundin was just about to throw her over his shoulder and deposit her on the doorstep, but she chose that moment to move to the cradle and he held himself in check. The fuss would wake Balin and start him crying. Dómarra leaned over the cradle and Fundin leaned back against the doorjamb, studying her studying Balin. 

She looked just the same as she did the last time he’d seen her, same worry lines between her eyebrows, same dull reddish-brown hair, braided tightly away from her face and neck. She was taller than Dóra, thicker too, but he wouldn’t call her stout. Her fingers drummed against the rail of the cot and he watched her closely for some sign of...well, he wasn’t sure. Approval, perhaps, or even love (for who could fail to love Balin?). But her face remained impassive, save for the slight thinning of her lips which could mean many things, but he doubted it expressed tender feelings. 

Thank the Maker Dóra was so diligent in the completion of her work that she decided to go to the library. He was growing more and more angry with Dómarra by the second and he was only related to her legally. He could not imagine what Dóra would feel if she had to watch her mother frowning at her firstborn child. 

“Well, he certainly doesn’t favor _you,”_ Dómarra said at last, though once again, he could not tell whether she thought that was a good thing or not. Given his mother-in-law’s opinion of him, Fundin concluded that it was more the latter than the former. 

He did not respond, not verbally. He shrugged and shuffled over to the cradle, giving Balin a look that would leave an observer in no doubt of Fundin’s opinion on him. He thought he was entirely perfect and totally loveable. Balin was asleep beneath a thin blanket, one tiny fist curled up beside his head. every once in a while his dark eyelashes would flutter or one of his feet would kick, just a little movement that disturbed the blanket the slightest bit. He could watch him for hours and not grow tired of it. 

Dómarra, it seemed, had grown tired of him already. She gave a short nod and proceeded out of the room. Fundin lingered for a moment tucking the blanket up a little higher over Balin’s chest, somewhat unnecessarily, before he followed her. 

“Do you want to…” Fundin trailed off, not sure what it was he wanted to say. “Hold him?”

“No,” Dómarra replied. “You forget I raised two children. When they’re asleep, it is best that they remain that way.”

 _No, I haven’t forgotten,_ Fundin thought testily. _But I wouldn’t say you raised two children, I’d say that they survived you, like a dwarf might survive a bad campaign._

Haldr was bad-tempered and rude, it couldn’t be denied, but Fundin had learned over the years that he had a caring heart. Even when he called him, ‘idiot brother-in-law,’ though Dóra disapproved, there wasn’t any sting in it. Actually, coming from him, Fundin thought it might be an endearment. Certainly, Haldr aside, Fundin had known his fair share of grumpy, ill-tempered dwarves. Dómarra was something else, though. There was a meanness in her, true, but an unhappiness that seemed to run right through her heart. He was tempted to believe she’d been born that way, but, looking at Balin, Fundin did not know how any dwarfling could be born so rotten inside. 

“You’re coming to temple?” he asked, when the silence between them stretched on. “Tomorrow, I mean. He’ll be eight days old.”

“Hmm, I will,” Dómarra said slowly. “In defiance of my daughter’s wishes. What a turn around from four years ago when she was practically _begging_ me to see you wed. How well you have worked on her since then.”

“I - _what?”_ Fundin asked, incredulous. “What are you talking about?”

Dómarra tilted her chin up and glared at him hatefully, “Before my daughter married you, I heard from her faithfully, letters arrived weekly. Now there is silence for months and do not pretend that you did not deliberately withhold the news of your child’s birth for so long in hopes that I would be unable to attend it.”

“I do!” Fundin exclaimed. “You had time enough to come down - Dóra wrote to you near three months ago!”

“Which she well knew would leave it far too late,” Dómarra replied. “I am a busy master of my trade, I require advance notice for any holidays I might - ”

 _“Holidays?”_ Fundin was shouting now, but he did not notice and Dómarra was not cowed. “That’s what this is? A holiday? You’ve got a _grandchild_ and all you can say to me is you’re vexed you weren’t given enough notice he was coming? I wonder you came at all!”

Dómarra opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by a piercing wailing from the upper floor. Balin had awakened.

“I will see you on the morrow,” Dómarra said, turning away from him. “You may tell my daughter I was here. For all the good it will do either of us.”

And she left him, with clenched fists and a weeping infant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't with this 'dam. I just can't. SHE RUINS EVERYTHING.


	36. Chapter Seven

Fortunately, the fuss involved in preparing for a baby’s Name Day was minimal, at least in comparison to preparing for Dóra and Fundin’s wedding day. To be sure, they dressed well, took care with their hair and beards, but as the day was meant to be all about Balin, how they were turned out mattered considerably less than it once had, a fact the two of them could only be relieved about.

Balin, dressed in a clean white gown with tiny pearls stitched in decorative swirls down the front, with a matching white cap on his head, seemed determined to sleep through the whole affair.

“And good for him,” Fundin declared firmly. “If he’s asleep, he won’t be crying, he’ll make a better impression that way.”

“Mmm,” Dóra agreed absently, running a finger along the length of the ribbon keeping his cap on his head - just to be sure it wasn’t so tight it would strangle him if he turned his head the wrong way. “Impressions are important.”

She knew her mother was in the Mountain, but did not know that she had come to visit and Fundin had no desire to enlighten her. Evidently, Dómarra had spoken to few but her acquaintances in the scriptorium and had even managed to evade Haldr, though she spent most of her time in the library.

At times he thought he ought to let her know that she had stopped it. It was clear that she was hurt by what she saw as her mother’s rejection of her only grandson, but he was not sure that informing her that she had nothing good to say about the babe would lift her spirits. Not that she’d said anything specifically _bad_ about him, but he had been so used to Balin enjoying the universal adoration of all the Mountain’s residents that he’d chanced to meet that Dómarra’s prickly appraisal of him threw him just a bit.

“I don’t care if she comes,” Dóra said abruptly, so abruptly that Fundin wasn’t sure she’d realized she was going to speak at all until the words were out of her mouth. He looked at her for a beat, but she colored darkly and ducked her head away, studiously avoiding his eyes and the miniatures of his parents on the bedroom mantle.

“Dóra,” he said slowly, working through a sudden flash of insight. “You don’t - you know you shouldn’t feel _guilty._ Don’t you?”

Hands twisted. Lips pursed. She raised her eyes once to look up at him, then averted her gaze to the floor again.  
It was a sign that his wife’s mind was awash in waves of trouble when she couldn’t answer back.

Fundin sighed, quietly, then crossed over to her, holding her in his arms for a long moment. “If you wanted to...look here, I don’t expect you to...to torture yourself over whether or not you’ve done your bit by your mother. Just ‘cos I haven’t...got one, haven’t had one a long while it’s…”

He was about to say, _It’s not always true that something’s better than nothing at all,_ but he stayed his tongue. They were due at Temple in an hour, it wouldn’t do to have a fight.

“I was the one who chose to stay,” she said quietly into his chest. Her arms were around his waist and she was squeezing hard. “I...I could have gone with her, so at times I think it was I who abandoned her, not the other way ‘round - no, no, let me finish.”

Fundin, who had taken a breath, prepared to refute her, let it out in a woosh and allowed her to speak on.

“You were so little when you lost your parents and I had _both_ of mine longer and...I think I ought to _appreciate_ them. Her. I never knew my own grandparents, my father’s mother went back to the Orocarni after her husband died and my mothers’ parents were much older when she was born and already laid in stone when Haldr was twenty, I never had grandparents, nor much family at all and I don’t want to deprive Balin of that through _choice.”_

Fundin disagreed with her completely - oh, he loved her, he thought she was a thousand times more blest with brains than he had been, but sometimes (not very often, but sometimes), Dóra could be utterly daft.

“You’ve plenty of family,” he said, pulling back a bit to smooth her hair back away from her face. “If he could get away with it, Thrór’d take Balin on as his own, you know. And there’s Gróin and Maeva and Dísa and Thráin and...right, that mighn’t be the best showing of all possible relations - ”

“Oh, hush,” Dóra swatted him. “You know I adore them.”

“And they adore you,” he said. They were words he’d repeated more than once, but somehow he couldn’t help feeling that Dóra doubted him every time. “And Balin. So don’t go making yourself sick over your mother, eh? I’m sure she’s not making herself sick over you.”

* * *

 

It was a very _fine_ ceremony. All the usual pomp, the usual blessings. Of course, this was grander than most Naming ceremonies that occurred beneath the Mountain since the king himself was there, beaming like it was his own child being presented at court. All the proper documentation was there, signed and witnessed. The child was a citizen now, albeit one with few legal rights. Recognized as a true dwarf, Made and imbued with a spirit by their Maker that ought to be recognized in court and in this holiest of places. That would be properly brought up, grow to adulthood, find a craft, perhaps begin a family someday. Or, if the child’s stay beneath the earth was destined to be a brief one, now the child would be given a proper funeral, interred in stone and properly mourned. Unlike those others who were never Named. Those tiny bodies that had drawn only a little breath or had never opened their eyes in the cool dimness that was perpetual beneath the stone. Burned, the ashes gathered respectfully and given to the would-be parents, to be quietly mourned and, hopefully, quickly forgotten.

It really was not a ceremony that ought to breed bitterness, but Dómarra felt bitter. Hardly an unusual state of affairs for she had suffered too many disappointments to feel otherwise. She wondered why she had come at all. She was granted no place of honor amongst her daughter’s newly adopted family (though, to be fair, she had crept in, unannounced, as she had three years ago during the wedding) and as the genealogy was recited through the sire’s line back to the days of Father Durin, it was as if she did not exist at all.

Which was likely for the best. For the whole lot of them. Balin, as he was to be called, seemed to be no true progeny of her line. Blue-eyed, black-haired, so eagerly embraced by the King Under the Mountain as if it was a son of his own siring. Pathetic, really, when she saw the King’s own son shrinking back from the eyes of the crowds, though it was not him they’d come to see. So much wealth and power gathered in one place, the commoners might think. But where they saw greatness, Dómarra could not but sense ruin.

The warrior-queen, the soft-hearted king who supped and drank, it was said, with Men and Elves. Increase of wealth, aye, he’d brought _that_ to Erebor with his treaties and his generosity, his friendliness. But he ought to remember the old sayings - when one opened one’s gates without posting a proper guard, one could not control what entered. And this was the legacy her daughter wanted to steep her grandson in.

Best not to pay too much attention. Best not to grow attached. This vein of Durin’s line grew in unstable rock. She did not trust it. She did not trust _them_ and as Balin was more a part of them than he was a part of her, she could not - would not - allow herself to feel overmuch for him. It was not wise to place much stock in that which would inevitably come to nothing.

Take her daughter for instance. Haldr was beyond the point of hopelessness, dull and utterly without ambition. But Halldóra had been different. Eager. Obedient. To a point, anyway. Dómarra invested good years in her, valuable years that she could never get back. To think of the books she would never illuminate, the texts she would never analyze. Halldóra had _robbed_ her of fulfilling her potential. At first, Dómarra had accepted the necessary sacrifice, content in the knowledge that he daughter’s own work would be so much greater. Now she saw that although she could account for intelligence, raw talent bestowed by the Maker, she knew that there was no way to predict how a fallible dwarf, built of flesh, not of stone, could squander it.

Marriage at eighty-four. A child before she was ninety. And although her daughter was beaming and blithely accepting all of the customary compliments and well-wishes a bearing dwarf was due upon the birth of their first child, Dómarra could only foresee disappointment for her as well. Could well imagine the time wasted - time she had _already_ wasted in feeding and washing and changing and minding the child. Time she would neglect devoting to her own craft and instead pour upon this child who could never hope to live up to his mother’s talents.

What did Halldóra imagine motherhood was? What did she crave from it? Affection? That was laughable. No sooner did a child learn to speak than it loosed its tongue in disobedience. Or, charmingly, as Haldr was wont to do by the time he reached schooling age, telling its parents that it hated them. If she wanted a child that she could mold, that she could trust to carry on her own craft beyond the span of her lifetime, she ought to have chosen her child’s sire more carefully; with that oafish guardsman’s blood flowing in his veins, Balin would be lucky if he learned to read.

Childrearing was not easy. It was difficult. It was wasteful. And, if her daughter had her mother’s own rotten luck, in the end, she might not be able to say that it was worth the trouble. To give the best of oneself for decades, and to be rejected was not an insult that any dwarf would bear lightly. Not even a mother to her own children.

Dómarra spoke to her daughter exactly once. She managed to catch her alone, carrying Balin to the reception in the main dining hall. Their exchange was due to be brief and so she made her words count.

She brought no present for the child. She paid him no compliment, nor any to his mother and father. The only thing she said, rigid with anger and her heart guarded against feeling any _hurt_ at her position in her daughter’s life was, “I hope he doesn’t give you half as much trouble as you’ve given me.”

Then, she left. Her things had never been unpacked. And as she once against set forth for the Iron Hills, she wondered why she’d ever come.

It was, she grimly reflected, simply another instance of her lot. To be unfailingly disappointed by her children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know what I was expecting (certainly not some kind of great reconciliation), but even I was surprised by how awful Dómarra was. I really like writing happy, fun, cuddly families, but sometimes dysfunction runs too deep. That's okay, she's off to the Iron Hills and they're not going to see her again for another forty years.


	37. Make Love, Not

It sounded like a horse race was about to commence in the suite.

“Go, go, go!”

“Come on, come on, lad!”

Óin tried to stack the odds in his favor, wiggling a piece of steak he’d stolen from his uncle’s plate as an enticement. 

Thráin, as usual, issued dour predictions. “Not going to happen - he can’t even _eat_ steak.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Óin said sedately. “He isn’t going to eat it, he just has to want to eat it - ah! Now, now, you’ve got to _walk_ first.”

He shuffled back a few inches, bringing the fork to his mouth and taking a bite.

“Oh, come now,” Fundin grumbled. “That’s _mine_.”

“You were the one who had a child,” Óin pointed out. “That means sacrifice.”

“To my nephew?” Fundin asked, plaintively. Óin just smiled and took another bite of steak.

“You’re rotten at this baby...training,” Thráin informed Óin. “For all you want to be ‘round ‘em all the time.”

“Shows what you know about babies and midwifery,” Óin rolled his eyes. “If you expect me to try to get a newborn walking. Do all the dwarflings beneath the Mountain a favor and stay _far_ away.”

“If I do that, he’ll fall,” Thráin replied, pointing at Balin who was steadying himself on his trouserleg as he reached toward Óin with grasping fingers. Walking did not seem to be in his immediate future and Thráin had no idea why his cousin and his father were so eager for Balin to be up and about. At least now they didn’t have to chase him - crawling could only take a body so far, after all, and he required an awful lot of looking after as it was. Thráin sighed and shook his head, which momentarily distracted Balin from his quest toward his father’s supper. The baby looked up at his cousin, then over balanced and fell on his bottom.

“Aww, look what you’ve gone and done!” Óin complained, finishing off the steak. “There’s five guineas wasted.”

“I’ll accept an acknowledgment of debt, if you haven’t got the money on you,” Thrór informed his nephew cheerfully, clapping him on the back. 

“That beggar?” Fundin raised an eyebrow. “Not likely, if he’s stooped to stealing off others’ plates.”

“I skipped supper,” Óin shrugged, tossing his fork back at his uncle, who caught it with a frown - nevermind the fact that there were still two decent sized portions of steak on his plate, it was the principle of the thing.   
As nephew and uncle bickered, Thrór got down on the floor and held his arms out to Balin. “Come here, lovely lad! Give us a kiss!”

Balin scooted across the floor expertly - these exact bets and wagers had been taken almost a year before, when he was having difficulties crawling. Oh, he could get up alright, but then he just rested there, on all fours, as if that was all there was to it. Óin stole a pair of Dóra’s earrings, with enticing hanging gems, to tempt him to get a move on. But after much cajoling and money lost, Balin finally got the hang of it and he showed off now, crawling toward Thrór and pulling himself up with his hands on his uncle’s knees. 

“That’s it!” Thrór exclaimed, proud as could be. He lifted Balin up and kissed him until he giggled. “Now, say it with me - _Thrór_. Thrór!”

Balin drooled and smiled and Thrór was satisfied with that. 

“Close enough!” he declared as Thráin rolled his eyes even harder.

“He didn’t say anything,” he muttered, annoyed as ever when tremendous fuss was made every time Balin so much as blinked. He was sure the lad would get a swelled head from all the undeserved praise. It wasn’t that he disliked Balin - actually, when it was just the two of them (which happened as rarely as possible since being solely responsible for his cousin made him anxious), Balin was alright. Quiet and happy to chew on a stuffed bear or chase a ball across the floor. Still wasn’t anything to throw a feast over. 

“Let me,” Fundin said, snatching Balin away from Thrór and tossing him in the air, prompting giggles of delight. “Say, Da! I know you can do it, you’ve done it before! Go on, go on!”

“Da!” Balin exclaimed, reaching out and slapping Fundin on the nose (affectionately, of course).

A general cheer went up at this and the door to Dóra’s office flew open. “Did he walk?”

“Ah, no,” Fundin said, turning toward his wife apologetically. “Just...called me Da. Sorry for disturbing you.”

But Dóra didn’t seem very annoyed at being disturbed. “Aww, that’s worth getting a bit excited over, isn’t it?”

“Ma!” Balin said, looking around, evidently expecting a similarly enthusiastic response. “Ma!”

“Good lad,” Dóra said, reaching for him with inky fingers. Balin went to her arms very happily and rather than slapping her nose, he busied himself trying to get his fingers in her mouth. “Thank you, no - no, let’s not, please, thank you - ”

“Want me to take him back?” Fundin asked.

“Or me?” Thrór cut in, holding his hands out just a moment ahead of Fundin.

“Haven’t you got a kingdom to run?” Dóra teased him, though she handed Balin over as he wanted. 

“Let it run itself for an hour,” Thrór said. He’d come direct from the forges and in his shirtsleeves, with his hair pulled back and his beard braided up, looked just as if he were any other master smith under the Mountain. “Does he need a rocking horse?”

Neither Dóra nor Fundin were given time to respond for there was a knock on the door. It was a messenger, for the king. Thrór accepted the missive with his free hand, bouncing Balin on his hip with his other. No one thought anything of it at first. Not until Thrór glanced up at Fundin and said, “Here, take him for me, would you?”

“What is it?” Thráin asked, feeling a sickening feelings building at his father’s troubled expression. 

“There’s a war on,” Thrór said, slowly. “In the Ironfist settlement in the North. They’ve called for aid. As soon as an army can be summoned - they _beseech_ us for help, I’m reading directly, now. And since when has that Clan beseeched anyone? Ever?”

“That’s a long journey to make,” Óin pointed out. “If they’re in the thick of the fighting, won’t it be over by the time you get there?”

“I’ll write to Grór,” Thrór said. “See if he’s heard of this - I knew there were rumblings of a conflict, goblins - that can drag out for _months_ , I need to ask Dísa...but I don’t think we’ll…”

Thrór trailed off, looking at Balin sitting contented in Fundin’s arms. His fingers were tangled in his father’s beard and guilt settled like a stone in his belly. “We’ll have to go, I think.”

“Let me see,” Dóra said abruptly, crossing the room and holding her hand out for the missive. “If they’re reaching out to us, they’ll need a reply right away. I’m assuming you’d like me to draft one, tonight? If Grór’s postmaster is attentive, you could have your reply by morning, would you like me to write to him while you talk to Dísa? It’ll save time.”

“Do that,” Thrór said, steeling himself against the inevitable. “And Fundin - call the guard?”

“Aye,” Fundin nodded, about to leave, when he remembered that he was still holding Balin. For a second, he hovered, torn between his duty and his son, but Óin held out his hands and took him, silently. 

“Da!” Balin said, smiling, so sure that he’d be praised as warmly as he was minutes ago. But Fundin only said, “I’ll be right back,” before he dashed out the door. 

It was as Thrór predicted. Their aid was sorely needed. And so, as quickly as possible, their warriors were gathered and an army, three-hundred strong, assembled before the Gate. 

Dísa was thrumming with pent-up energy, drilling Thrór on strategies he ought to employ in any one of fifty situations she could imagine for such battles as they faced. She offered to write her instructions on his arms, but he laughed and said he’d sweat them off. As ever, each thought the other should be in their place. But the King’s place was in the King’s Guard and the Queen’s, as tradition dictated, was head of the Mountain Guard. One traveled. One remained. 

In some cases, several remained. All around the entrance hall families gathered in small clusters to kiss and pray and wave good-bye to Ama or Adad. Some had been at it so long, the words were well-practised, even as they stuck in their throats. For others, the words were new. Gestures either halting, lingering too long, over too quickly. 

It seemed very important to Halldóra that Fundin hold Balin until the last possible moment. She stood before him, hands twisting. She’d been writing so many letters, to allies, to other kingdoms, inquiring about what aid they intended to send, if any, how they could help, could serve, in gold or arms. Keeping busy helped keep her mind off this, the inevitable moment of separation. She’d known it was coming, even before the messenger arrived on her doorstep. She’d known it was coming since she and Fundin had married.

He was a warrior. His boots knew the stain of dirt beneath the soles, his skin knew the burn of sunlight, and his blood the call of battle. It would call to him again - if they were lucky, many times hence. 

“Well,” she said nervously. “Well...you...have everything you need? Do try to write to me, if you can. Erm. If you can’t, of course, don’t think of it. I understand if you’re busy.”

But she didn’t understand. Not at all. She’d never done this before. 

Neither had Fundin. Not like this. 

“I’ll do my best,” he smiled. “I’m not the best writer.”

They looked at each other, Fundin over Balin’s head - it was early yet and his son was half dozing, his head resting on his father’s chest. Fundin’s armor would have been cold against his cheek, but his beard was let down, providing a soft cushion for him. 

As Captain, it was his duty to lead the army out the doors. He ought to go...any minute now...any minute he’d be able to tear himself away.

Dóra held her arms out for her son; she was the braver of the two by far, in this moment. 

“Fight well,” she said, balancing Balin on her hip. She reached for Fundin and took his hands, first one, then the other. She kissed them each, tongue stumbling over prayers that she ought to know by heart. “Don’t...don’t bleed too much.”

“Just enough to let them know I was there,” Fundin replied, bending low to kiss her mouth. He closed his eyes, savoring the moment, drawing it out as long as he could. “I love you.”

“I love you,” she whispered, pulling away just far enough to speak to him. When she opened her eyes they were overbright, but she rocked back to stand on flat feet, lifting Balin’s hand so he could wave. “Say good-bye to Da, dearest. You’ll see him soon.”

Balin didn’t understand and was too tired to comply with his mother’s wishes. He sighed a little, almost asleep, his little hand curling on her shoulder. Fundin touched his hand and bent down to kiss his head. “I love you, Balin. I’ll be back. Soon, I hope.”

But it would be nearly a year before he saw them again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dwarves really like to fight, so this was inevitable.


	38. Chapter Two

The first few days weren’t so bad. Halldóra could just pretend that her and Fundin’s schedules were running inconveniently contrary to each other’s, which happened frequently enough that when she got into bed all by her lonesome, she could almost believe it.

Balin, similarly, seemed not to miss his father overmuch - at first. After a week had gone by, then two, Dóra frequently caught him crawling through the flat, stopping in doorways, pulling himself up on chairs and turning his way this way and that, is if in search of something. Soon he grew fussy at bedtime, in a way he hadn’t been for months. She’d let him cry a bit, five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes on bad nights. She tried to go twenty once, on Gílla’s advice, _If you give in too early, they’ll never learn to sleep on their own_ , but that only left her near tears herself.

“Shh,” she soothed Balin, rocking him in her arms and kissing his hot face. “I know, I know, I miss him too.”

Fundin, though he’d deny it, was the better of the two of them at soothing Balin when he was upset. Maybe it was the size of his arms, the breadth of his hands, the warmth of his chest, but Balin found his father utterly cozy and comforting. No matter how hard he wailed and wept, when his father held him he was calm again within minutes.

Dóra couldn’t blame him; she liked a cuddle from her husband as well.

Balin quieted to whimpering in his mother’s arms, but he still seemed to have no intention of sleeping.

“I’m not as cozy,” Dóra admitted apologetically, snuggling Balin up in her arms and rocking him against her shoulder. He lay his head down and took tight hold of her hair with one of his hands, but reached out for someone neither of them could see with his other.

“Da,” he murmured, breathlessly. “ _Da._ ”

Dóra sighed, crossing to her bed. “Poor lad, poor, poor lad,” she muttered other such nothings, only pausing when her foot snagged on something caught round the bottom of the bedpost.

It was one of Fundin’s tunics and the sight almost made her smile. He was so careless with his clothes in a way he wasn’t with his weapons or his tools. Every night he polished his tools, sharpened his blades, then tucked them all away in trunks or cupboards - locked, since Balin had discovered that if you tugged hard enough on a door, it would open, replete with contents that could be emptied and played with.

Yet, without fail, his boots would find themselves in the oddest places, his clothes would be draped over (or under) furniture. It seemed he was not naturally tidy and the discipline of the Guard could only infiltrate his daily habits so much.

Dóra bent down and picked it up - this one missed the laundry, a faded blue tunic that Fundin likely wore only to the forge, or the arena, it smelled strongly of him…

Abruptly a thought crashed into Dóra’s mind and without pausing to reflect, she wrapped Balin up in his father’s tunic as if it was a swaddling cloth. The change that came over him was remarkable, he stopped crying and calling out and he actually yawned, his whole face scrunching up and his eyelids fluttered.

 _I am never having this tunic washed,_ Dóra thought, only a touch hysterically. He was coming back, after all. He’d hold his son, soon, he said.

Once Balin was sleeping, his mother placed him in her bed, with pillows on either side so he wouldn’t roll off. Then she lit a candle, took up a quill and penned her husband a letter.

* * *

_I don’t know if this will reach you. And I know it’s only been a week. And I know that we’ve gone to war since our creation, some go, some remain. I know it’s the way of things, how they must be and will be. But I miss you._

It took two months for the letter to reach him. It rained constantly, and the further north they got, the icier and icier the water dropping down on them became.

More than once, his traveling companions muttered angry oaths against Durin’s Bane, for effectively cutting off their sensible roads of travel beneath the earth. There wasn’t any rainfall in roads of stone. Wasn’t any snow either. Or wind.

The snow and the rain and the wind wreaked havoc on that poor letter. But Fundin did it still more damage to it, taking it out of his shirt pocket, unfolding it when the weather let up and reading it over and over again.

 _Balin wouldn’t sleep until I_ here there were too many holes and too much water damage to quite make out what she’d written. _But he’ll be alright, I’m sure. I hope your road is easy._

These weren’t like the letters she sent to her mother, or the long manuscript presentations she gave to her fellow scholars. More than in any other bits of her writing Fundin had chanced to read over the years, this sounded the most like her. Little wonder he cherished it, even as it got more and more tattered.

“Did she send you a special sort of etching?” Loni winked, pretending to read over Fundin’s shoulder during a moment of calm on a narrow stretch of road.

Fundin smiled, faintly, knowing that Loni was teasing, but he didn’t have it in him to rib him back. He hadn’t thought it would be _this_ hard. How many times had he gone away before? How many loved ones had he left behind? But this was different.

“D’you know, Dísa never wrote me?” Fundin asked, somewhat rhetorically. “Nor Gróin.”

“Well, they’re neither of them scribes, eh?” Loni replied immediately. “Only one of my sisters writes to me - Lodís, but she’s eldest, I think she’s more attached to me than my mother. Did I tell you what she said when I was born?”

Loni was the only lad amongst four children, a rarity among their people. He was also the youngest, and Fundin knew that he was more than usually fussed over. “What’d she say?”

“Well,” Loni continued, “there I was, red as a strawberry and not much handsomer, and she marches up to my parents and says, ‘This one’s mine,’ and just sticks her arms out and expects Ama to hand me over. Obviously, she didn’t, I don’t know I’d be here today if she had. Not that she wouldn’t have done well with me, I just don’t think she’d want me in the Guard. Maybe the Mountain Guard. Stay close to home, get brought supper during a long night on the curtain wall.”

“Have you gotten a letter from her yet?” Fundin asked, but Loni shook his head before he finished.

“Nah, but in this weather, I’m sure the raven was blown off course. I sent two back her way, though, just letting her know that it’s bad up here, so if they don’t hear back from the front right away, it mightn’t be...on account of the worst.”

The worst. They never talked about it, their fellow soldiers. What would be would be. No predicting that sort of thing. And they’d be reunited in the Halls.

“I ought to have written to Dóra,” Fundin lamented. It wasn’t likely a letter he sent now would reach her. Or she’d receive it in such a state that she’d worry more for having gotten a torn and tattered illegible note than she would if she got nothing at all.

“Nothing for it now,” Loni observed, clapping Fundin on the back. “Send yourself back. That’s all she’s wanting.”

It didn’t seem as though it would be too difficult to follow through on his word. The battle was nothing, the war had been going on for months. They were the cavalry, really. Rout the last of them, support the weary soldiers who had been fighting much longer and much harder than them. It was a tedious, dangerous fight for the goblins were vicious and, as ever, cared nothing for themselves as they threw themselves upon pikes and spears. It was a short battle. It was the road home that would drive them to the very limits of their abilities.

* * *

Six months after Fundin left, Balin finally learned to walk. It was on a quiet night at home, without a crowd, just Dóra and, interestingly, Thráin. He’d made a habit of stopping in to spend time with the two of them recently, though in months past, he preferred visiting after Balin was asleep, or when there was a larger crowd to pay him mind.

“Oh, you’re terrible at this,” Thráin lamented when Balin once again fell on his bottom.

“He’s only just learning,” Dóra laughed, getting down on her knees in front of Balin. “Come along, walk to Ama, please.”

But Balin seemed to have had enough of walking. Instead, he crawled into her lap, tangling his hands in her undone beard.

“So long as he doesn’t realize he’s up on his own, he gets by on confidence,” Dóra informed Thráin. “The second you give him some encouragement, he sits right down.”

“Well, he probably doesn’t like the attention,” Thráin observed. “Do you, Balin?”

Balin looked up and pointed at Thráin. “Tay!”

“Aww!” Dóra exclaimed proudly. “He’s learned your name!”

“Hasn’t,” Thráin squinted down at Balin, a hint of a smile playing around his mouth. His beard was growing in, it made his fleeting smiles all the more difficult to see. “Have you? Who am I?”

Balin giggled. “Tay!”

Thráin deflated slightly. “He’s not saying it.”

“He _is_ ,” Dóra insisted. “Go on, Balin, who am I?”

She placed her hands over her heart and Balin replied, “Ama!”

“Good!” she praised him, kissing his cheeks. “And who is that?”

“Tay!”

Thráin, caught in a burst of inspiration, snatched a few miniatures off a viewing table. “Who’s that?” he asked, holding up a rare image of Haldr, scowling out from the frame. “Who’s that, Balin?”

“Arrgh!” Balin said. Then, repeated it when he got a strange look from Thráin.

“Haldr growls at him,” Dóra explained. “Every time he sees him. Now Balin does it back, I think he’s concerned that Uncle Haldr doesn’t know how to talk.”

“Odd,” Thráin muttered, laying Haldr’s image aside. “Alright, what about this one?”

It was a painting of his father, but not a formal portrait. Many of the dwarves of the kingdom had prints of Thrór in their homes, but the only images of him in Fundin and Dóra’s household might have been any other grandfather under the Mountain.

That one took him a little longer. And some prompting from his mother. “Go on, you know that - he’s your favorite!”

At least, she was sure he was one of Balin’s favorites. Thrór certainly made it his business that every moment Balin spent in his company should be a delight.

“For!” Balin exclaimed after a minute. Then, “Sa!” when Thráin showed him a picture of the Queen.

“And who’s this?” Dóra asked when Fundin’s portrait, the last in the lot, was held up for viewing.

Balin stared at it for a minute, then cocked his head to the side. “Da?” he said, his voice a little uncertain.

“Right!” Dóra replied, alarmed that he’d paused, even for a moment. “Right, Da, very good, that’s...very good.”

“What if he forgets all about him?” Thráin asked, suddenly worried, laying Fundin’s miniature aside and staring at Balin. Balin reached out and snatched Fundin’s image off the table, immediately popping it into his mouth to gnaw on it. “What if Fundin comes back and he doesn’t know who he is?”

Dóra could hardly blame Thráin for voicing worries that she’d harbored for weeks, but she had to tamp down the urge to give him a good hard smack for giving voice to such awful thoughts. “Don’t eat your father, please,” she murmured to Balin, removing the picture from his hands. He slid off her lap and crawled back to the table to hoist himself up and find more of his relations to snack on. It was an old painting, had been made using another, larger portrait as a reference. Perhaps it was simply because his father hadn’t the distinguished grey in his hair that Balin had trouble recognizing him.

“Your father’s gone in the past and you still knew who he was,” she said to Thráin.

“Well, of _course_ ,” he rolled his eyes and put the miniatures back out of the reach of hungry baby dwarves. “But Da’s got a personality the size of the Mountain. He’s very memorable. Not for nothing, but Fundin’s not nearly so...much.”

“That’s not true,” Dóra said softly, thinking of the thousand and one things Fundin did every day for her, for Balin, for his friends, his fellow-smiths, his family. Laughing at Thrór’s bad jokes, joining Dísa on horseback at dawn, patiently listening to Gróin’s complaints about whatever the guild was doing that was particularly pointless...getting into the bathtub with Balin because they discovered that it was the only way he’d let himself get immersed in water that wouldn’t end with him screaming, walking him round and round the room to get him to sleep, tickling him to make him giggle...loving her, through all of it. Quieter than Thrór, perhaps, but just as vital.

“I haven’t heard any word for months,” she said quietly. “Not since word came of the outcome of the battle. I thought they’d be home by now.”

Thráin shrugged. “Fundin’s a rotten letter-writer. And it’s winter. Travel’s always bad in winter. Er.”

He sat down on the floor next to her and Balin, eyeing her warily.

“What is it?” Dóra asked, fearing some bad news - absurd since if anything awful had happened, she’d be one of the first to know.

“Do you want a hug?” Thráin asked in a rush, turning a little red around the neck. “You look...like you need one.”

This was a rare offer, mithril-rare and Dóra knew she’d be a fool if she didn’t take it. She turned toward Thráin and held him at once, squeezing him tightly around the middle.

“I’m sure he’s alright,” Thráin said, patting her shoulder a little awkwardly. “Just snow or something’s slowed the mounts. Fundin’s tough as granite. Anyway, if Ama thought something was really wrong, she’d be the first one out there trying to mount a rescue. But they’re fine. Probably. Erm. Almost certainly. You...you aren’t crying, are you?”

Dóra wasn’t crying, but it was a near thing. Thráin was being so sweet and she was sure he’d dash off if she blubbered on him. So she smiled, kissed his cheek and said, “Perfectly alright - and I’m sure you’re right. Do you want to help get Balin ready for bed?”

Thráin pulled away, making a face, “Not really. Do you want me to?”

“No,” Dóra laughed, getting to her feet and taking Balin with her. “Go on - ah, but could you manage a good night kiss?”

Thráin looked pained about it, but he leaned down and gave Balin a kiss on the cheek. Balin smiled at him and reached out, bopping Thráin lightly on the nose.

“Eugh, he hates me,” Thráin lamented on his way out the door.

“He loves you!” Dóra shouted after him. “You love everyone, don’t you? Me and Thráin and…”

The large portrait of herself and Fundin, done soon after their wedding, hung over the mantle. It wanted cleaning, she noticed, but was otherwise very clear. She walked with Balin over to the mantle and lifted his hand to point at her husband. “Da,” she said clearly. “You love Da very much, don’t you? And you still miss him.”

“Da,” Balin repeated dutifully, then pointed up on his own and said more forcefully, “Da!”

“That’s right,” Dóra sighed and kissed him. “Da. Good night. We love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes - just sometimes, our gloomy little raincloud lightens enough to let some sunshine in.


	39. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning for language.** Loni has a dirty mouth, but then, I don't blame him. Ice storms are awful.

“Fucking ice,” Loni grunted, chipping away at the ice caked on the road way, inches deep. Too slippery for the mounts to make it - there were discussions as to whether or not it’d be better to put them out of their misery and go it on foot. “Fucking snow. Fucking cold.”

Fundin made a vague noise of assent, grateful for once that his sister wasn’t along. Though Dísa put up a good front, he knew that having to put the horses down would hit her hard. Still, he supposed - _hoped_ rather - that she’d prefer the horses go than the King’s Guard be stuck in the North for the rest of time.

“Should I sing the lay of Roan’s Beloved?” Loni shouted over the howl of the wind. “Realizing a form out of stone - ”

“No!” Fundin shouted back. “Stop, please!”

“Just trying to lighten the mood!”

“Just keep working!” Fundin growled. He hadn’t thought it would be this bad - it had _never_ been this bad before, he’d gone abroad for decades, in snow and sleet and rain and heat and bad food and dwindling supplies and no water, but this onslaught of blizzard after blizzard was new. It had gone on for days, with brief periods where the snow would stop and the wind would howl. It gave them just enough time to gain a few miles, then they’d be stopped by the weather.

The horses had been suffering, no one had been able to mount. The debate was now whether or not it would be easier to go it without them. Take the rest of the road by foot. The supplies were so low now that they ought to break up the rest of the carts for firewood, make them easier to carry on their backs.

No one gave a thought to turning around. They weren’t halfway home yet, but it felt better somehow to keep treking toward Erebor rather than give up what ground they’d covered. Besides, the further south they went, the better the weather would get. They hoped.

Thrór approached them later, told them to stop, make camp. “We’ve some meat to dry into jerky,” he said, flicking his eyes up toward Fundin. “Don’t tell your sister.”

“I don’t know that I want to eat horsemeat jerky,” Loni volunteered.

Thrór laughed a little dully, “Neither do I, my lad, but give it a few days, we’ll both be singing a different tune - come along, the scouts found a cave, let’s give it a rest.”

The cave was damper than they would have liked, but when a hundred guardsmen squeezed in together, it at least warmed them all up.

“That smells awful,” Tírra said, referring to the meat, not the dwarves. “Who was in charge of the food?”

“Ah, you can’t go pointing fingers,” Loni shook his head. “We didn’t know we’d be stuck out here.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?” she narrowed her eyes and raised her hand to give him a smack, but lowered it without bothering.

Fundin just sighed and closed his eyes. The smell was bad - Dóra smelt of vanilla. He’d not heard from her since her last letter. Either she hadn’t written back, or worse, she _had_ , but the raven hadn’t been able to reach them. That first letter she’d sent was illegible, with wear and tear, but he remembered every word.

“All I know is if we’ve got to draw lots to figure out who’s to be feasted on if it comes to that, I’m hoping you pick the short stick,” Tírra grumbled.

“No one’s going to be eating anyone,” Thrór said, calmly over their heads. He looked down on them all and smiled. “Come along, let’s take heart. Tough as stone, eh? What’s a few more weeks on the roadside?”

“D’you mean, none of us have any plans?” Loni asked. “I don’t know about _you_ , but I’m very popular.”

“Amongst your sisters,” Tírra shot back.

Loni grimaced, “Not from that quarter, no. Mayhap I should get myself a spouse, eh? Get someone who loves me best. What d’you say, Fundin?”

“Hmm?” He’d been thinking of other things, better food, a warmer bed.

“Ah, he’s off dreaming about Dóra, I don’t doubt,” Tírra said. “Though I’m not so sure she loves him best - what about Balin?”

“Fundin can get himself to the necessary,” Loni wrinkled his nose. “That’s a point in his favor, if nothing else.”

“Nah, everyone loves Balin more than they love me,” Fundin smiled faintly. “I know I do.”

“I bet he’ll be walking when we get back,” Thrór said. “Oh, I was away from Thráin for more than a year when he was little - one of those meetings of the Seven Kingdoms. When I got back, he’d forgotten all about me.”

Fundin had allowed himself to slide into a daydream, about Balin’s smiling face and reaching arms, but he snapped out of it. “What? How old was he?”

“Eh...had to be four or five? Just about Balin’s age,” Thrór recalled. “Cried every time I held him - well, I don’t know which one of us cried more, I felt awful and Dísa didn’t have any use for either of us.”

“Oh,” Fundin said quietly. Well...Thráin was moody. Perhaps he hadn’t forgotten Thrór at all, he was just bitter that his adad had been so long gone. It sounded like something he would do. Not something Balin would do. Balin was terribly sweet. Balin wouldn’t put him through that.

“I remember I was...fifteen, had to be, and my father got back from the wars,” Tírra piped up, “and I didn’t give him a minute of my time. I was such a brat about it. made him ply me with sweets and presents before I’d kiss him - or call him Da.”

“You wouldn’t call your father _Da_!” Loni exclaimed. “That’s cold.”

That was right. It was cold. Balin wasn’t cold, Balin was delightful.

“What’d you call him?” Thrór asked, laughing at the idea - ugh, just the thought of it made Fundin’s stomach churn...then again, that might’ve been the smell of the roasting horses.

“Didn’t give him the satisfaction,” she shrugged. “I pretended he wasn’t there.”

“Oh, I did worse!” Another guardsman who had evidently been listening in chimed in with, “I called my own ‘Mister Skaldr’ for a week!”

“I bit mine every time he tried to pick me up!”

“My middle daughter clean forgot me after half a year away - she was only two, but still took me aback!”

All around him, every dwarf seemed to have some tale of either having snubbed their own parents when they were small or else having their children give them the cold shoulder upon their return from the wars. It all combined to make Fundin feel ill. He knew he was going to be gone a while, knew that Balin was very young...but to _forget_ him…

“Ah, look what we’ve gone and done,” Thrór chuckled and patted Fundin’s knee. “You’re turning green! Nah, don’t pay us any heed. I’m sure Balin’ll warm up to you ere long!”

It wasn’t the kind of encouragement Fundin wanted, he’d rather a comforting reassurance that of _course_ he wouldn’t be a stranger to his son when he returned. Fundin passed the night uneasily, but when day broke he began to realize, as the snow came again, harder than before, that he had better stop worrying about whether or not Balin would know him when he came home and start worrying about whether he would get home at all.

* * *

 

Halldóra had taken to wearing the white scrap of cloth the ravens brought back from the battle around her wrist. As a reminder; it was traditional, after a battle, to be given black for the dead, red for the wounded, white for the living. It was easier than waiting for words at a time when pen and ink and dwarves to write home could be scarce.

Fundin was alive. Unhurt. But she hadn’t heard from him in months. Not a word. Not a letter. All the missives they’d had came from Thrór and spoke of delays, bad weather, treacherous mountain passes. And those stopped coming weeks ago.

“What if something’s gone wrong?” Dóra asked Dísa one day, after court had adjourned. It was over much more quickly than their usual sessions - no one felt as inclined to stay and chat when the Queen Under the Mountain sat upon the throne. Those who had come to beg favor were also less liked to take as long pleading their cases.

“Oh, something’s definitely gone wrong,” Dísa replied grimly. “If I had to guess, the weather’s caught up with ‘em. I doubt the mounts’ll make it back.”

No word in nearly a month and she was worried about the ponies?

“Should we send a - ” Dóra began delicately, but before she could recommend that perhaps a scouting party be sent for, Dísa cut her off.

“Already have done. Dogs couldn’t scent a thing, but the ravens found ‘em. They’re on course for home, should be back in a day or two. Had them bring rations, but they can’t carry much between them. Scouts won’t do any good, they’re as likely to get sunk in the ice as anyone else. Nothing more to be done than to wait.”

Dóra was listening, of course she was, but more than that she was looking at Dísa, closely. The puckered scars in her face seemed more deeply drawn in, the craggy lines of her brow hard-etched. She was tapping a toe impatiently against the stone floor and her fists kept opening and closing as if trying to grasp something.

“I hate waiting,” she spat sourly, mouth twisting into a frown as she looked at Dóra. “Are we done here?”

“Er…” Dóra replied faintly, thinking that there were matters of state to discuss, a few tricky legal matters that had come up that required crown input, but she decided to let it lie. “We’re done.”

“Good,” Dísa nodded. “Going out for a ride.”

Snow was falling fast outside the big picture window. Dóra glanced up at it, then back at Dísa. A thousand objections came to mind, but she bit her tongue before she could give voice to any of them. No doubt she’d already considered them - or she _hadn’t_ , but Dóra fancied she was well enough acquainted with the Queen to know that she’d do as she wanted, no matter what objections Dóra raised. And who was to say she wouldn’t be right? She’d been out in foul weather before. She knew what she was about, far more than Dóra who could happily go weeks without seeing a single beam of sunlight.

“Have a good time,” Dóra bid her, somewhat faintly. Dísa nodded at her, flung her court robes aside and left them sagging upon the throne. Almost as an afterthought she flung the crown off her head and tossed it backward. Heart in her throat, Dóra lunged forward to catch it, but she needn’t have bothered; it landed just where it was meant to, softly atop the seat with nary a clatter.

Sighing, Dóra muttered to herself, “I suppose I shouldn’t _leave_ it - ” but paused when she heard the sound of running feet.

 _No one’s home,_ she thought slightly bitterly. _Everyone who has any authority has gone away. Come back later._

Fortunately it wasn’t anyone come to beg an audience - at least, not in the usual way.

“Is Ama here?” Thráin asked, out of breath. From the look of him, sooty and sweaty, he’d just come from the forge.

“Gone,” Dóra sighed. She removed a handkerchief from her pocket and beckoned Thráin to bend down so she could scrub some of the filth off his face. “If I ran swiftly, I _might_ catch her - ”

“No you wouldn’t, her legs are _twice_ as long as yours,” Thráin scoffed dismissively. “I just wanted to know if she’d heard anything.”

He didn’t need to specify what he was talking about. “Nothing...substantial,” Dóra said, taking particular care not to scrub any grit into Thráin’s eyes. “A few days more. She thinks.”

Thráin rolled his eyes and stooped lower so she could brush ash off his head. That he was letting her fuss was a testimony to how nervous he was. “So she doesn’t know. Right. Where’s Balin?”

“At the library,” Dóra pocketed her handkerchief and Thráin straightened up. “I know I ought to find him a spot at the childminder’s, but my brothers’ apprentices are so accomodating.”

“Does Haldr let them skive off work?” Thráin asked doubtfully.

“They maintain that they’re teaching him to shelve,” Dóra shrugged. She’d never actually gotten round to forcing Haldr to draft another copy of his disavowal of all responsibility to his nephew and felt they were all better off for it. He’d been alone with Balin several times since his birth and no harm had come to either of them, she felt it was a positive step forward.

“Want to come collect him?” Dóra asked Thráin. He shrugged and replied that he would, if she’d like.

It was a quiet journey back to the library - well, back to the doors of the library for Thráin as there would be no accounting for Haldr’s reaction if Dóra let him tromp through with dirty boots and stained hands.

“I thought you’d _never_ turn up,” Haldr complained, making a beeline to Dóra with Balin held a good foot away from him. Balin giggled at being so jostled by his uncle, but Haldr looked decidedly unamused when he announced, “The child soiled himself.”

“Babies do that,” Dóra replied patiently, picking Balin up and checking him for an unpleasant odor. Finding none she raised an eyebrow and asked, “Did you take care of it?”

“Oh, by the Maker, no,” Haldr shuddered. “I gave him to Gílla, she took care of it. Who do you think I am?”

“Arrrgh!” Balin growled.

“That’s right,” Haldr nodded. Squinting behind her, he took in the sight of Thráin in the doorway and frowned, “Are you collecting stray smithies?”

“That’s Thráin,” Dóra rolled her eyes, nearly dropping Balin as he threw himself back over her shoulder to wave at his cousin, shouting, ‘Tay!’

“Is it?” Haldr asked, raising an eyebrow. “Hmm. For a second, I thought he was a cunningly arranged pile of ash. Off you go, then, don’t come back until you’re all three of you cleaned off.”

“I’m perfectly - ” Dóra began, but Haldr clapped a hand over her mouth and interrupted.

“Guilty by association,” he said, then shooed her out the door. “Farewell.”

“Bye-bye!” Balin said, when his mother shook her head and turned to cart him out of the library. He opened and closed one of his hands in a reasonable facsimile of a wave. And though he would deny it, if pressed, Haldr returned the gesture for a moment before he stalked away to haunt the stacks.

Thráin followed Dóra back to her suite without asking if she wanted company. He also made use of her facilities without asking if she minded him drawing himself a bath, but this she used to her advantage.

“Oh, good!” she said when she caught Thráin relaxing in the bath. Before he could ask for a moment to himself, she’d stripped Balin out of his clothes and handed him over. “It’s nearly time for Balin’s bath, thank you so much!”

“You’re not welcome,” Thráin grumbled as Balin splashed in the water, shrieking happily.

“Don’t forget to give his toes a wash - I don’t know how his feet get so filthy, he does wear socks,” Dóra muttered on her way out, half to herself.

With Thráin occupied with the baby, it was a perfect opportunity to get a bit of extra work done - there were papers to be sealed, with or without the monarch’s own hand to do the sealing. Some matters had to be left to pile up - meetings with guildmasters being pushed back and back until they could speak to the king himself. A few of the braver masters had allowed Dísa to mediate for them in disputes, but most preferred Thrór’s softer touch, easing the proceedings with pints all around, rather than the queen’s preferred method of glaring until both sides admitted they were perhaps being intractable and settled on a compromise before she literally knocked their heads together.

But Dóra couldn’t concentrate. As court scribe she had her fingers in so many pies, it was frustrating beyond words that she felt so out of control. She could not control the weather, nor clear the roadways. It was clear that the queen was keeping as tight a handle on the situation as she could, but for all their vast wealth and power, it rankled to realize how powerless they were against the vagaries of travel.

Years and years past, there had been vast networks of dwarf-roads below the earth connecting their kingdoms. That ended with the fall of Khazad-dûm. Now, often, long distance travel could only be accomplished by using the unprotected roads created by Men or worse, venturing into uncharted wilderness. Not just their king, not just Fundin, but all of their warriors who went abroad were at risk. It was a harrowing time for everyone, but Dóra’s worries tended to go in one particular direction.

She wanted her husband home. She missed him terribly, his presence, his voice, his laughter. It was the longest she’d gone without him since they’d met and it was as if he’d taken a small piece of her along with him.

Casting a quill aside, Dóra groaned. She could not work. And a dwarf who could not work was badly off indeed.

“Go get her!” she heard Thráin encourage and half a second later Balin came bursting into her study, laughing hysterically.

To her great surprise, not only had Thráin actually given Balin a bath (or at least gotten his hair wet), he’d dressed him for bed as well. Thráin really was a very sweet, helpful sort of boy, once you got past his prickliness. Dóra was very grateful for him, for keeping her such good company while Fundin was away, but she had a feeling that it wasn’t only for her benefit that Thráin was such a frequent houseguest.

“What do you think about ordering supper in?” she asked Thráin, who was still wringing his hair out in the kitchen. His clothes were fresh, the servants must have been in to replace them while she was shut up in her study. “I don’t really feel like going down to the dining hall.”

“I never feel like going to the dining hall, it’s all one to me,” Thráin said, tossing the towel over the back of a chair. His hair looked like a nest, but he didn’t seem exactly bothered by it. “I don’t have anyone to sit with.”

“Oh, of course you do,” Dóra said, ringing for a servant. “You have your friends - ”

“Fellow apprentices,” he shrugged. “And Óin doesn’t count. He’s said if we weren’t blood, he wouldn’t know me.”

“Oh, he’s just teasing you,” Dóra sighed, but Thráin shrugged again. He had such a low opinion of himself, not for any reason that she could see. He was a fine, strong lad who did well in his apprenticeships, both in the forges and in the Guard. True, he was a little shy (and a lot grumpy), but he wasn’t a bad sort of lad at all. Dóra was enormously fond of him and assumed anyone would be - so long as they had a chance to get used to him. “Óin loves you very much - ”

“It’s one thing to _love_ someone and another to like them,” he retorted. “No one likes me.”

“You’re hungry,” Dóra said decisively. “We’ll put that to rights, then no more talk about how no one likes you - here, hold Balin, he likes you very much.”

“He doesn’t have taste, we’ve established that,” Thráin said, but he took Balin anyway. Supper was delivered with due haste, but although neither of them had eaten in hours, both picked at what they were given; Balin probably ate more than Thráin and Halldóra combined.

“Ama doesn’t think they brought enough food,” Thráin spoke up suddenly. “She said the weather snuck up on them. She keeps saying they should be home sooner rather than later, but that doesn’t mean anything. Then she says not to worry - not because everything’s going to work out, but because ‘What’ll be will be,’ and...well, I hear her snoring nights, so she’s not too fussed.”

“Just because your mother sleeps, it doesn’t mean she isn’t fussed,” Dóra remarked lightly. “Everyone’s different, you know. Not everyone...acts the same way, when they’re afraid.”

“Well, Ama’s never afraid of anything, so…”

“That’s not...I shouldn’t speak for her,” Dóra sighed, tearing her goat into smaller and smaller shreds. “I think your Ama is simply practical. She knows she can’t do more than she’s doing and isn’t going to lose sleep over it. Don’t think too harshly on her for it.”

“I don’t think harshly on her,” Thráin mumbled, pushing his greens round and round his plate. “I think harshly on myself.”

“Don’t do that either,” she chided lightly. “No one else does. I promise.”

Their plates still full, Dóra rose to put a sleepy Balin to bed.

“Can I stay here tonight?” Thráin blurted out. “I don’t think she’ll be back and - ”

“Of course, thank you for offering!” Dóra exclaimed. “Why don’t you ring for the plates to be taken away? And...why don’t you get the chessboard out? I’m not tired, I don’t think I’ll be going to sleep for a while.”

Balin went down easily and the two played in silence for two games, each winning one. It was when they began their third that Dóra ventured to say, “Thráin, dear, you seem a little...down. Are you alright?”

“Mmm,” he replied.

“That’s not really an answer.”

“It’s just…” he fiddled with a rook, then dropped it on the floor. “I don’t know. Everyone’s...they’re either gone or they’ve got someone. Except for me. I’m no use to anyone.”

“You’re not even seventy!” Dóra said, a little more forcefully than the situation called for. “You don’t need to be useful, you need to...learn, so that you can be useful in the future - but anyway, you _are_ useful, you’ve been very helpful with Balin while Fundin’s been away. And I’m sure your mother finds you a great comfort.”

 Thráin looked skeptical, “She finds her horses a comfort. I’m just _there.”_

“We’re all just here,” she remarked lightly. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. No one expects - no one _needs_ you to accomplish great deeds today. Or even tomorrow. Take advantage of that, have a lie-in.”

Thráin’s mouth twitched. “You’re trying to make me smile.”

“You have a very nice sort of smile,” Dóra grinned, reaching across the board to tweak his nose. “It’s a privilege to see.”

Thráin’s cheeks turned bright red above his beard, “Ugh.”

“You’re welcome,” Dóra settled back on the sofa, stifling a yawn.

“I didn’t say thank-you.”

“Sure you did, or have you forgotten? I’m a language expert. I speak Thráin.”

The last game ended in a draw, when both finally got tired of playing. Thráin made himself comfortable in the second bedroom and Dóra took herself off to bed, but scarcely had she gotten under the covers when the trumpets sounded and she bolted out of bed. The warriors had returned home.

There wasn’t a bit of pomp or dignity in the mad scramble of dwarves that descended upon the entrance hall. Many were dressed in their work clothes, had been awake for hours, going about their toil and crafts, but others had been roused from bed and ran through the streets clad in their night things, dressing gowns, and slippers. Halldóra and Thráin were in the latter state of dress and while she paused to shove her feet in a pair of slippers before she snatched Balin up, quilt and all, the crown prince was barefoot.

He saw his father first, hair wet, beard unbound. Dísa, who had him in a tight embrace, looked similarly wet, but she was clad from top to toe in furs and oilskins; Thór’s clothing had been quite literally reduced to rags. He held his wife, tightly, shaking his head and muttering, “Terrible, terrible.”

Thráin stopped short, hovering nearby awkwardly. Thrór lifted his head and rubbed his eyes - then caught sight of his son. Exclaiming, “Ah!” he bolted forward and lifted him off his feet (not easily done since Thráin was gaining on him in height), squeezing him so tight poor Thráin could hardly breathe.

It took Dóra a moment more to find Fundin. It ought to have been easy, he being the tallest of the lot, but his beard was unkempt and - her eyes widened to see it - he’d lost a shocking amount of weight.

That didn’t stop Dóra from running to him as fast as her legs could carry her and throwing herself at him, sighing in unspeakable relief. He might have looked wretched, thin, drawn and he was _freezing_ , but he was home and that was all she cared about.

Fundin did not kiss her, merely held her for a long, long while. She felt him trembling against her, whether from relief or cold, she had no idea, but she held him as tightly as she could without squashing Balin too severely between them.

Balin, for his part, did not seem much troubled by his father’s sudden reappearance - if he’d noticed at all. He’d been sound asleep when Dóra pulled him out of bed and was making annoyed little huffing sounds as he tried to snuggle down and use his mother as a less than effective pillow.

Dóra had Balin bid his father’s miniature portrait good-night every time he went down to bed, even going so far as to plant a kiss upon the glass. Like a dutiful lad he mimicked her and, as she pulled away slightly and handed Balin to his father, she hoped he could summon up the same enthusiasm for the genuine article.

Fundin picked Balin up. Balin made a _very_ unhappy sound and Dóra saw his trembling cease - on the contrary, he tensed immediately. Looking up at her husband, she felt herself stiffen when she saw the awful expression on his face, she was sure she’d never seen him looking more nervous, not even when he held Balin for the first time.

“What’s - ” she began, but Balin interrupted her.

Blinking sleepily, he looked up at his father, stared at him for a moment before he smiled and exclaimed, “Da!”

Whatever she had been expecting Fundin’s response to be - a smile, at last, or perhaps his customary reply of, ‘’Lo, laddie,’ he surprised her. By crying. Loudly.

 _What happened?_ Dóra bit her tongue before she could ask. She had no idea what happened on the roadside, but it was obvious that her husband had suffered terribly. They could talk about it later. Now it seemed most important to get him to bed.

“You’ll feel better after a nice, long sleep,” she said soothingly. She grabbed Fundin’s arm and started walking him out of the hall. Poor Balin seemed utterly bewildered by this turn of events, he was looking at his father with wide eyes and started patting his chest (not particularly gently, Balin’s version of patting someone was closer to smacking).

“Sorry,” Fundin mumbled, wiping his eyes with his free hand.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Dóra said, rubbing his back. “Balin, stop hitting your father. It’s alright, you’re home, that’s all that matters.”

“Some of ‘em…” Fundin’s voice was hoarse, his words came haltingly. “Some of ‘em didn’t...lost more on the road than the battle.”

Dóra’s step faltered. “That’s…”

“Can’t even bury ‘em,” Fundin went on. “It was too dangerous to get them. Too much ice. Couldn’t see.”

“That can wait until tomorrow,” she said quietly. “All this can wait ‘til tomorrow. Now...food? Bed? A hot bath? All three?”

“Just bed,” Fundin sighed. “Just bed.”

Bed could be arranged. Dóra had just gotten Balin settled in his own cot when she heard a clang from their bedroom. Nervous, she ran back in and found Fundin’s armor - what was left of it - piled on the floor beside the bed. Fundin himself was atop the blankets, snoring. It seemed that he’d just managed to get his boots off before he fell asleep.

She wound up crawling in under the scrap of blanket that Fundin hadn’t sprawled out on top of, wiggling under his arm. He should have eaten, she thought. He looked awful, grey, when his skin had a naturally bronze hue to it. His beard seemed more grizzled than it was before he left and she lifted her head up and kissed his nose gently, closing her eyes against the sudden rush of tears that came with knowing her husband was home safe, but others’ loved ones were not.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered. “We’ll...it can wait until tomorrow.”

The nightmares did not wait. The nightmares came that night and for weeks after. More than once Dóra woke to Fundin holding her against him with everything he had, as if afraid she was going to be wrenched away by some unseen force.

This was different, new, and a little frightening. But Dóra pulled on his beard to wake him up, reminded him that he was home, that he was safe, that Balin was nearby, that he had them both and they loved him _so_ much.

He was so apologetic. It had never hit him like that before, he said. He’d come out of the other side of bloodier battles with nothing worse to show for it than a few scars and some dinged armor. It’d pass, he insisted. Soon.

“That’s alright,” Dóra replied, unfailingly patient whether he woke her out of a sound sleep or tensed and shook all over when Balin cried over some little trifle that had put him out of sorts. “We’ve time to sort it out now. You’re home. That’s all that matters.”

A smile would ghost over Fundin’s face as he pulled her to him. “You missed me?”

“A wee bit,” she’d reply and kiss him. “You’re the worst letter-writer I’ve ever known.”


	40. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warning:** This is a very sad, hard chapter. **Premature birth** , **loss of pregnancy** , **death of an infant.**

Dóra wasn’t satisfied that her husband was fully recovered from his ordeal until his stomach was more convex than concave and she was satisfied that she couldn’t feel the hard outline of his muscles beneath his flesh when they cuddled together at night. It took a bit longer to recover his peace than it did to recover his girth, but after a year or so the nights he woke shuddering from a sound sleep were rare and he wasn’t long to drop off into slumber afterward. The Mountain mourned their slain. And, as beards that had been cut to full morning slowly grew out into half-mourning, thick, but not long enough to hold full braids, Dóra found herself rounding out in the middle once again. 

Naturally, she told everyone she knew. 

“Ah!” Gílla squealed and clapped her hands joyfully. “Muhudel Mahal! Two in ten years, _that’s_ a rare gift. May you have a dozen more!”

“No!” Haldr shouted loudly, his voice ringing through the stacks. “Not a dozen. I will allow you this _one_ more, but after that, you and Fundin take separate beds!”

“That’s nice, dear,” Saga smiled sincerely, but privately thought that birthing one dwarflings was quite enough for a lifetime - more than enough. Little ones did distract one terribly from their crafts, after all. 

“This is _wonderful_ ” Thrór beamed and spun Dóra around in the throne room in full view of the Guard who, naturally enough, could not help overhearing the good news and whistled and thumped their spears in congratulations. “Do you want a new Name Day gown commissioned? Or do you want to use the one you have? I’d best have another made, just in case - if the babe takes after you more than Fundin or the other way round, Balin’s mightn’t fit!”

Dísa just shook her head with a bemused expression on her face. “You’ve got guts enough for a dozen warriors,” she said, patting Dóra on the back.

“Wasn’t Balin good enough for you?” Thráin asked, and before either Fundin or Halldóra could reply he turned to Balin and said, “Best enjoy yourself. You’re being replaced.”

“That’s alright!” Loni, who was supping with them on that particular eve exclaimed. Holding out his arms for Balin to toddle into he said, “If you’re too much underfoot, spend the night at Uncle Loni’s house, alright? Toffees and hot chocolate all around!”

“He hasn’t teeth enough for toffees,” Fundin reminded Loni, who grinned at him.

“Hasn’t stopped me yet.”

Balin, for his part, seemed pleased enough at the prospect of a baby in the family. At his father’s prompting, he would pat his mother’s belly every night and say, “Baby, night-night, baby.” His parents naturally responded with great enthusiasm at how sweet he was being, kissing him and calling him a good boy, so it was more likely than not that Balin’s interest was born more of a desire for praise than anything else.

Still, he was likely aware that some change was coming. He was moved out of his cot into a bed they’d commissioned from a cabinetmaker that was suitable for little dwarflings. It had high sides so neither he nor his bear were in danger of tumbling out at night. 

It was almost a year to the day that Dóra went to Maeva, suspecting that she might be carrying a second child when she felt a queer twinge as she bent to put Balin to bed.

“Ama?” he asked when she didn’t immediately crawl in next to him. Bedtime duties largely fell to her since Fundin was far too big to share Balin’s bed with him. Balin poked his head up over the side and watched as his mother held her stomach and blew a long breath out her nose.

“Nothing, dearest,” she said brightly, easing herself in next to him, book in hand. “Just...nothing. Where were we?”

“Pigs!” Balin replied, holding a book out upside-down.

“Ah, right. Wolf at the door,” she reminded him with a smile. “ _Very_ frightening.”

“Grrrr!” Balin said, curling his little hands into paws.

“That’s right,” she smiled, tucking Balin in close to her side. “Now, as you’ll recall, our first pig built his home all of straw and danced and played the day away. And the wolf came to the door and said, ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff...’”

Balin made it as far as the pig whose stick home was soon nothing more than a pile of kindling before his eyes were fluttering closed and he was yawning more than he was imitating the wolf. Dóra closed the book, set it aside and bent down to kiss him. “Good night, dearest.”

“Night-night, Ama,” Balin murmured sleepily. Then dragging a tired hand over her stomach added, “Night-night, baby.”

The pain did not reassert itself when Dóra stood, nor when she made her nightly abultions. She thought nothing of it as she made ready for bed, read until she was tired and blew out her candle. Fundin was on the overnight duty upon the ramparts, she was roused from slumber slightly when he came stomping in, but being used to it, she quickly fell asleep again. Until her husband pulled the blankets aside and woke her, swearing loudly.

After that...after that, it was all a blur. 

Dóra remembered, as if watching it all, without really being part of the action, bidding him to fetch Maeva. Fundin hesitated, not wanting to leave her. But she bade him go again, more calm in voice than she felt she ought to be. Her voice was steady, though her heart was pounding as if it wanted to beat right out of her chest. And she was thinking the most inane things.

_I hope we don’t wake her. I hope she isn’t too cross with being summoned. We’ll need a new mattress…_

Maeva was good at her craft. An expert. And very stoical. Perhaps that kept Dóra from panicking as much as anything. It all seemed so very fast. It hadn’t seemed quick at all with Balin. Nearly two years of waiting and hours of pain and sweating and nearly squeezing the life from Fundin’s hand. Not so, this time. It must have hurt, it must have hurt tremendously. But Dóra, when she cast her mind back, she did not remember feeling anything at all. 

A girl. A tiny, red-skinned girl, who would have fitted easily in Fundin’s palm, barely spanning his hand from fingertip to wrist. 

“Do you want to hold her?” Maeva asked carefully, after wrapping the poor thing in a clean blanket. “She’s...she’s still breathing.”

Dóra reached out for her, of course she did. That was what mothers did for their children, wasn’t it? No matter how long they had them.

Next to her, Fundin gave a heaving sob, and covered his face with his hands. Maeva lingered just a moment longer before she took up her bag, the soiled linens, and bloody water and left them alone with their daughter. 

Fundin recovered admirably. He held Dóra and Dóra held the child. Her flesh was so thin, you could see her heartbeating right through her chest. And what a heart she had! For she fought for every breath for half an hour before she stopped breathing. She never once opened her eyes. 

Maeva never left the flat. She peeked in on Balin every so often, who slept through the entire ordeal. She sent a messenger to her husband, who she had only barely managed to keep from trotting along at her heels saying that the worst would happen and he was under no circumstances to come until he was bid.

Not an hour after she sent the messenger did Gróin appear, dressed, but his hair and beard were unbound. 

“Where are they?”

“In their room - and keep your voice down,” she ordered in a whisper. “I don’t want you waking Balin.

“S’hands,” he swore, barging right in and sitting heavily upon the sofa.”I knew they shouldn’t have gone round, telling everyone, it’s bad - ”

“Don’t!” Maeva commanded sharply. “I don’t want to hear it. It’s no matter if you tell the whole world the moment you leave the healer’s, nor if you send missives while the babe’s crowning. These things happen.”

“No need to tell me,” Gróin muttered, not quite able to meet his wife’s eyes. They’d lost two, both years ago, when Óin was still in school. The first had been quite like this, though Maeva had not been so far along. They’d told everyone, naturally, brimming with excitement. The second they hadn’t told a soul, save each other. It hurt just as much either way. 

In his haste to gain entry, Gróin had left the door ajar, thus admitting his son who was still wearing his smock, having come from a late dissection. 

“Is she alright?” Óin asked breathlessly. “And the babe?”

“Dóra’s going to be fine,” Maeva said firmly. Then, passing a weary hand over her brow, added, “But there’s not going to be a baby.”

“Damn,” Óin said, leaning against the wall. “What happened?”

Maeva shook her head. That was the trouble with apprentices; they thought their masters had answers for everything. “Nothing happened. These things don’t work out sometimes. It’s no one’s fault; there’s nothing could have been done.”

Óin just looked at her, unsatisfied, but unwilling to press the issue. Then he said, "Is someone going to send for Haldr?"

Gróin snorted dismissively. "As if he'd leave his books."

But leave his books he did. In fact, when Haldr arrived and Maeva gently told him there was nothing to be done, he glowered at her and inserted himself in a chair, without even a book to occupy him. "Library's closed for today," he said shortly. "I've nowhere to be."

Thrór was next, and Dísa, stony and silent, along with him. 

“This is terrible,” he said, eyes very bright with tears. “Poor lass, poor lad - has anyone gone in?”

“Let them alone,” Maeva pleaded. “Just for a few minutes - I don’t know how word travels so fast round this Mountain, you’d think with walls of stone…”

But she trailed off, only rousing herself to clean Thráin’s knuckled them. He bloodied them after he came in, sharp on his parents’ heels, by punching a wall.

“It’s not fair,” he lamented. “They don’t deserve it.”

“Ha,” Dísa laughed hollowly. “If we got what we deserved…”

“Shut up,” Gróin insisted. “Just shut up.”

Dísa paced. Thrór wept. The rest sat stiffly, unmoving, until they raised their heads when Maeva rose to go upstairs. She held up a hand to stay them.

“I’m looking in on them,” she said warningly. “Just me. Just for a moment.”

They remained where they were, reluctantly; it had been nearly an hour and dawn was coming. 

Maeva was gone longer than a moment. When she came back, she looked and sounded very tired. “Would one of you fetch a cremator, please?”

No one moved. 

Sighing loudly, she asked, “Would one of you find a messenger and _send_ them to fetch a cremator?”

There was no set ritual for this. A dwarf of fewer than eight days was not true-Made. Not to be made to rest in stone, but to be returned to their Maker in fire. It was not their time for life. 

The little girl was to have her ashes placed in a simple urn and, for the time being, to be laid to rest beside Hallthór, Halldóra’s father in the crypts. There would be no funeral.

Maeva returned to the room and emerged with the little wrapped bundle to be handed over for cremation. It was not such an uncommon occurrence that there were not dwarves enough to complete the task, though no one claimed it as their craft. Often, it was a juzrâl who tended the offertory blaze, where dwaves would cast their unfinished creations as an offering to the one who Made them all. 

The mourning party were destined to wait a little longer after that. Balin woke shortly thereafter and, with no one to stop him, padded through the connecting door between his nursery and his parents room. They had shut it in the night, but it was not locked. 

It was strange to him, to see his parents still abed when ordinarily they were rushing about, preparing for the day. He used a little stepping stool that had been placed beside the bed for the purpose of hoisting himself up onto the blankets. He smiled at them and crawled over to his mother, petting her stomach as usual.

“Baby?” he asked brightly, expecting praise.

Through it all, Dóra had spoken little, and cried not once. But at the sound of her son’s voice, the floodgates broke. She shook her head and tugged him into her lap, kissing his head and weeping. 

“No, dearest,” she said in a ragged whisper. “No. No baby.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short and sad, I'll try to insert a happy chapter quickly.


	41. Chapter 41

The next time, she tried to tell herself, was better than the first. It was earlier, so much earlier. And she hadn’t told anyone, save Maeva and Fundin. It was easier. That was what she kept repeating over and over and over, to Fundin, to Maeva and, when he had to leave for guard duty - when she _insisted_ he leave since it would do neither of them any credit to remain home when only she was ailing - to herself most of all. 

To bed with hot stones wrapped in cloth and applied with regularity to her stomach.

Wasn’t that easier than laboring with no reward?

She wasn’t even entirely useless. She could read over the latest dailies from the lower courts, adding her own commentary where she suspected Thrór’s knowledge of the law was a bit lacking. But she’d only been two cases in - both incidences involving the Guildmasters, both conflicts over wages - when she lay her pen down and found herself blotting tears from the paper.

But this was easier, she reminded herself. Not even showing yet, no one to tell, no one to know. She absented herself from court, sometimes. She was permitted a day of working from home. Here and there. Nothing unusual. And there was a small back catalog to tend to. Trifles. Trifles.

Later, when she felt more composed, she took herself to the childminder’s and if she walked at a plod rather than her usual quick steps through the Mountain, no one noticed, no one commented. Enjoying the walk, perhaps. Smiling reflexively at babes in their amad and adad’s arms. She had her own waiting for her, after all. She had that.

Balin was much happier now in the minders’ care than he had been when they started bringing him a year ago. He was a curious little fellow, always busy, it was good for him to be with children his own age, kept entertained while his parents worked. Once upon a time he could lie contented in his cot or in a little rigged up hammock to swing in, but once he’d learned to walk, he was not content to stay still. All babies grew up sometime.

But he was still always very happy to see his parents when they came to fetch him. No sooner had a master called, “Balin, your Ama’s here!” than he abandoned his toys and friends and ran toward the low gate blocking the door, arms outstretched.

But Dóra didn’t pick him up today. She smiled and held out her hand saying, “Come along, dearest, we’re going to have a walk.”

Balin obediently placed his hand in hers, eyes shining as he asked, “Go and see Da?”

“Ah, no, not today,” Dóra replied. She couldn’t help smiling and ruffling his hair - Balin _adored_ his father and quite right too; there wasn’t a better dwarf for miles around. But Fundin was on guard duty and it wouldn’t do to be distracted by a little fellow who wanted to run through the halls, chased by his comrades on duty. If Fundin could never resist Balin’s imploring to play with him, his fellow Guards were equally helpless before him. 

It was a good thing, she mused as she waved good-bye to the other children who had chased after Balin to see what all the excitement was about, that the likelihood of the Mountain being laid seige to by an army of dwarflings was vanishingly small. 

Balin swung her hand a bit as they walked chattering about what he’d done that day, “I went on the horsie, but Atli want to go too and I said, ‘No!’ but then I shared.”

“Did one of the minders tell you to share?” Dóra asked absently; a hazard of being his parents’ only, Balin was very used to having his own way.

“Aye, they said, ‘Share Balin! Be nice!’ and I did,” he said, not with the pride one might expect in a dwarfling who had done the right thing, but with the resignation of a child who felt they’d made a great sacrifice unwillingly. It was the same sort of tone Thráin adopted when he’d had to _talk_ to someone. Bless them both. 

“It was a very good thing you did,” Dóra informed him, squeezing his little hand in hers. “Sharing and listening and doing as you were bid. I’m sure Atli was very pleased to have a turn.”

“He said thank you,” Balin recounted. “And I played in the paint!”

He held up his free hand which, though clean, had a bit of blue beneath the fingernails. 

“Oh, that sounds lovely,” she said. “And what did you paint?”

“Um…” he drawled as he tried to remember, tapping his chin, a practice he’d picked up from Uncle Thrór. “I drawed a diamond. A blue diamond. This big!”

He held up his hands about a foot apart and Dóra made a sound of appropriate enthusiasm. At least she hoped so. She felt a bit...not quite present. The way one felt when one was dreaming, as if everything around them was not as solid or clear as it ought to be. 

Balin was oblivious, talking on and on about this friend or the other who he’d squabbled then madeup with, the minders who were his favorite and that he’d had a nap and did not want another one please. 

“Alright,” Dóra nodded. “You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to, but Ama has work to do, could you play quietly for me, please?”

He took a minute to think about it - Balin very rarely agreed to do things that he did not want to do, but at least he took the time to consider the issue. 

“I will try,” he said at last and Dóra smiled as she opened the door to their rooms.

“That’s all I ask.”

The couch looked very inviting. That was her first thought as she considered whether or not she wanted to go to her office - to be fair, her stomach was hurting something awful, she hadn’t taken anything for the pain since the morning. At least she’d be able to put her feet up.

Balin tottered in a few minutes after she’d gotten herself settled, holding a wobbly stack of puzzles which he immediately overturned and sat amongst the rubble contentedly. Dóra favored him with a small smile, glancing up now and again over the top of her spectacles to check on him. Balin was an easy-going child (so long as he had his way). He did not object to solitary play, indeed, he was used to it, there being such a dearth of children his own age to play with. That was why, despite his early protestations of going to the child minders’, Dóra was insistent. He needed playmates.

She could not tell when she drifted off, but she woke to the feeling of being poked and prodded. 

Balin was industriously attempt to cover her up with a blanket he’d retrieved from his own bedroom. It was a mite too short, but he grunted with effort and ran from one end of the couch to the other in an effort to get her properly covered up. 

“Oh, you haven’t got to do that,” Dóra yawned, sitting up a bit. “I shouldn’t be sleeping, I should really be working, but thank you, dearest.”

Balin rocked back on his heels and looked at her, confused. “Is it your naptime?” he asked. “Ama’s naptime? You need a blanket. And a pillow. I want to help.”

“No, no, it isn’t Ama’s naptime,” Dóra said, putting the blanket aside gently. “I’m not feeling well, that’s all. I’ll be better soon.”

At the alarming announcement that she was under the weather, Balin gaped and looked downright panicked. Fortunately, at that moment, the door opened and he saw his father enter the suite. Balin made a beeline for him and grabbed his hand, dragging him further into their home. “Da! Ama is sick! Make her better!”

“What’s wrong?” Fundin asked immediately, kneeling down before her as Balin looked on worriedly. “Do you need a healer?”

“No, I’m fi - I’m _tired_ ,” Dóra corrected herself, rolling her eyes. Balin had inherited his father’s family’s penchant for dramatics and it showed at the most inconvenient times. “I’m tired, but no worse. I’m better, even than I was yesterday, nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix.”

“Why don’t you go to bed?” Fundin asked, taking her hand. “I’m home, I’ll mind Balin.”

“Will you notate Thrór’s court minutes?” she asked, smiling a little lopsidedly. “No, no, it’s nothing at all, I’ll be perfectly alright you two. Why don’t you go to supper? Hmm? Or play.”

That was all it took to turn Balin’s mind from his troubles. Taking up Fundin’s free hand he shouted, “Play with me, Da! Play with me please!”

“You could make Thráin do it,” Fundin reminded her as he let Balin lead the way to his room. “It’s not too lofty for him, I don’t think.”

“I could do that,” Dóra said tiredly, but knew she would not. She loved Thráin dearly, she did, but today she did not have the energy for Thráin. Inevitably any conversation they had would turn into a litany of wrongs the world had done him since the last time they saw one another and while she was usually happy to lend a sympathetic ear, she did not have much to spare at the moment. Thráin would have to wait. 

It all wound up waiting. She’d scratched a few more comments, but ultimately decided that it would best to tackle the project when she wasn’t so weary. Eventually her husband and son made their way to the dining hall for supper, but she turned in early, not being very hungry.

She didn’t realized the had returned home until, once again, the blankets around her shifted and a very small boy with very cold toes snuggled up against her, apparently intended to spend the night. 

Dóra blinked blearily up at her husband who surveyed them both with a shrug. “He said he wanted to be sure you were better. But I think it was all a ploy, the sneak.”

“He’s very clever,” Dóra acknowledged. “Where’s Porridge?”

Porridge was the name that had been given to Balin’s little stuffed bear and though he might drop off to sleep easy enough without him, if he woke and the bear wasn’t in arm’s reach, he had a tendency to panic and wake the rest of the household. 

“Thanks for reminding me,” Fundin said, slipping into the nursery to retrieve the bear. It took a few minutes and he returned, mumbling, “That lad has too many playthings.”

“Hmm,” Dóra sighed, carding her fingers through Balin’s messy black curls. “If only he had someone to share them with.”

“Hey now,” Fundin said softly, getting into bed alongside her. “We’ll get there.”

“Will we?” she asked, voice tight. “He’s going to be fifteen soon. I don’t want to wait ‘til he’s too old to be bothered.”

“Gróin’s got nearly fifty years over me and I don’t think you can say he isn’t bothered by all I do,” Fundin replied. “When it happens, it happens. Could be...could be it’s better to have some time in between. He’s rotten at sharing, the minders always tell me.”

Dóra smiled and had to admit, that was certainly true, though they weren’t as blunt as Fundin, ‘We had a wee spot of trouble over some blocks,’ ‘Balin needed some convincing before he would let the other children look at the books - actually, he piled them up and sat on them,’ ‘I’d recommend he leave his little stuffed bear at home, he bit a lad who wanted to give him a squeeze.’ But _perhaps_ he’d be more inclined toward generosity if he had someone to share with. 

"He'll be spoilt," Dóra lamented. 

"He'll be...indulged," Fundin admitted. "I turned out alright, eh? And I grew up practically on my own. Oh, and here's something - Dísa had me on ponyback by the time I was Balin's age. And there's something his amad's determined to deny him."

"He'll be trampled," Dóra said, quite firmly. "When he's older you can take him on all the adventures you'd like amongst horses and hay and..."

"Dogs?" Fundin asked hopefully.

Laughing quietly, his wife swatted him. "You're worse than Balin! Aye, dogs, if we must - but never in the house! Nor about me, if it can be helped."

"If you'd just get to know them - "

"I'd come back from the kennels covered top to toe in hair," she replied. "The dogs the hunters are so fond of are bigger than me! And bigger than Balin."

"Here's a thought," Fundin suggested. "If ponies are too big, what if we saddled up a hound and - "

"No!"

"Shh!" Balin shushed the pair of them with an expression and tone he'd copied from his uncle Haldr (whose name he had learned, though the dwarf in question still preferred being referred to by growling). "I am _trying_ to sleep! Where's Porridge?"

"Here you go, lad," Fundin said fondly, handing the bear over. Balin hugged him gratefully to his chest and prepared to nod off again.

"Hey now," Dóra said softly, tilting his chin up. "Don't I get a kiss good-night?"

Balin sighed a little, as if he was being put-upon, but obediently opened his eyes and craned his neck to kiss his mother on the nose. "Night-night, Ama, I love you - now go to sleep!"

All was quiet for a few minutes, then Fundin whispered, "You're right. Spoiled rotten. You know, a dog'd give him a sense of responsibility - "

"Fundin!"

"SHH!"


	42. Chapter 42

Somehow - _just_ how, no one could say, but somehow - Thráin had got himself a sweetheart.  
That was to say, he’d got himself a sweetheart in the loosest sense of the turn, meaning some dwarrowlass he was courting. Fundin was not generally the first dwarf to be particular about phrasing, but he was not convinced that Freya actually had a sweet heart.

“Stay out of it,” his wife advised serenely, peering at him over the top of her spectacles.

“But - ” Fundin began, though he didn’t get far before Dóra shook her head and cut him off.

“No,” she said. “My advice is to stay out of it.”

“It’s only that - ” Fundin tried, but no matter how he phrased it, Dóra anticipated him and disagreed before he’d come to the point.”

“Once upon a time,” she said, laying her book aside and folding her arms. “There was a dwarrowlad named Fundin. Fundin had an elder brother named Gróin. Gróin loved Fundin very much and sought to protect him from everything, especially near-sighted scribes - ”

“It’s not the same,” Fundin declared heatedly, though precisely _how_ it was not the same, he struggled to articulate. “It’s only - it - it’s just that…”

This time Dóra waited patiently for him to get a sentence out; that was more discomfiting than the interruptions because it forced him to think the matter through.

“Something about her’s...she’s… _haughtly_ , isn’t she?” Fundin asked, pacing the floor in front of his wife.

“I think she’s got a healthy opinion of herself,” Dóra replied delicately. “But if Thráin doesn’t think she’s haughty - ”

“Well, Thráin’s no good judge of character,” Fundin said dismissively. “How can he be? He’s got about three friends I can name off the top of my head and at least _one_ of those is related by marriage.”

The last he directed at her very pointedly.

“I was acquainted with Thráin before I was acquainted with you,” Dóra rightly pointed out. “I don’t think Freya’s all that bad, she’s a wee bit...prickly. But she might be one of those dwarves whose disposition improves upon closer acquaintance, just give her a chance.”

The trouble was - well, one of the spots of trouble, anyway - that Freya did not appear to want anything to do with _them._

Oh, she was cordial enough when she met with them, but made clear her impatience with their presence through the tapping of her foot upon the ground, the thin line her lips took on when she thought Halldóra was speaking more than she ought to and her not-to-subtle manner of putting an end to a conversation by saying, “Lovely to have seen you, but we _must_ be going.”

“Thráin isn’t the grandest example of civility the Mountain can boast,” Dóra reminded Fundin after one such encounter that left her husband fuming. Balin had been attempting to cajole Thráin into coming round after supper to play him at draughts and Thráin had nearly agreed to one quick game, but Freya reminded him that they were otherwise engaged with her parents that night. Engaged with what and when precisely she did not say, but Thráin deferred the invitation until later. “It’s just as likely he didn’t…” _want to come_ , she ended, signing behind Balin’s back.

Balin did not seem to care tuppence for Thráin’s refusal, and despite his mother’s attempt at discretion, took his father’s hand and said, “You can play with me instead!”

Fundin fancied that Balin was just putting a good face on a disappointment and agreed that they could go a few rounds together, but honestly, Balin found his father a more engaging partner than Thráin for his adad was more inclined to let him win.

“All I’m saying,” Fundin huffed in annoyance, “is she’s keen on him passing the time with her parents, but when does she come to see us?”

“She takes her meals with us,” Dóra reminded him.

“Oh, aye,” Fundin rolled his eyes. “And talks to him all the while - I don’t know what Thráin says that’s so fascinating, even with her, he’s dumb as a stone.”

“Hmm,” Dóra smiled up at her husband. “Thráin’s not the only dwarf who doesn’t speak overmuch, in company.”

Not that she’d say so to her husband’s face, but there were acquaintances aplenty among the scribes who still found their union to be a puzzlement. ‘But he doesn’t _talk!’_ Vitr complained to her more than once in a state of consternation. ‘I don’t know how you bear it.’

Vitr was a dwarf with very decided opinions who liked to talk for talking’s sake - he’d gone in as a schoolmaster, which was a calling that suited him very well for he liked to be the best-informed dwarf in a room and it was easy to accomplish that feat among twenty and thirty-year-olds.

‘He talks to me,’ Dóra smiled at Vitr, who shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it - or if he did imagine that Dóra actually conversed with her husband, he had no idea what they found to talk about.

“I talk to you,” Fundin grumbled, as if reading her thoughts. “I talk to my friends, my sister - I’ve _tried_ to talk to Freya.”

Dóra couldn’t help herself; she laughed aloud at that. “Have you? I can remember you bidding her good evening the other night.”

“That doesn’t count,” Balin informed his father, looking up at him with a big smile. “You’ve got to at least say, ‘Good evening’ and ‘How are you?’, otherwise it doesn’t count for anything.”

Fundin was a stout-hearted dwarf who could parry an assault coming from two sides so long as he was fighting off soldiers armed with weapons. It was a good deal harder not to admit defeat when it was his wife and son ganging up on him.

“Hmm. Humph. Well,” was all he got out before he finally lighted upon a point in his favor. “I haven’t accosted her in a paddock and railed on about how she’s trying to ensnare Thráin.”

“You haven’t!” Dóra agreed brightly. Beckoning her husband to lower his head, she rose on her toes and gave him a kiss. “Very good show!”

“And I’m not as bad as Gróin,” Fundin growled, though he did kiss her back.

“No,” Dóra smiled. “You’re not as bad as Gróin.”

“Oooh,” Balin shook his head at the two of them in a disapproving way. “I’m telling Uncle Gróin that you’re talking about him! He’ll be so cross!”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” Fundin exclaimed, lifting his son up and hauling him over his shoulder like a sack of grain. “You wouldn’t want to be a poor lad whose lost his parents, would you? Uncle Gróin’d skin us alive!”

For her part, Halldóra was not as concerned with Freya’s conduct toward herself and Fundin (though she could admit that occasionally she wished she’d warm up a bit toward them), she was much more concerned with how Thráin felt about the whole thing. She very much wanted to discuss it with him, but knew from experience that trying to goad Thráin into a discussion about his feelings went about as well as trying to force an oliphaunt to pull a cart.

Luckily, Dóra was a shrewd dwarf who fancied she knew Thráin quite well at this point. Sometimes, she found, remaining silent where he expected to be needled was just the thing. Thráin so often expected to be vexed that when he was not, he sometimes sought vexation out, just to bring equilibrium to his day.

“So, what do you think?” he asked without preamble or greeting during one of the irregular noontime meals and and Dóra had taken to arranging once he was well and truly finished with his schooling.

“About what, dear?” she asked as she tore into her bread before scattering the pieces in her stew, a habit she kept up whether she had a book to read while dining or not.

Thráin blew out an annoyed breath that might have sent a lesser dwarf to quaking in his boots. Though he’d not ever reached his mother’s great height, he was tall for one of their kind and thicker built through the shoulders and chest than his father. A very good thing too, Dóra thought, for strangers would not recognize his huffing and puffing and glowering for what it really was - one of Thráin’s famous pouts.

“You know,” he muttered, tearing into his own bread with his teeth moodily. “You _do_ know, don’t act stupid.”

Dóra kicked him under the table, “I have a particular dislike for that word. Let’s try again, more politely, please.”

Thráin mumbled something like an apology and began again. “Freya.”

Even when he broached a subject himself, it was like pulling teeth to get him to speak on it.

Smiling blandly at him, Dóra lay her spoon aside, folded her hands on the table in front of her and simply waited. It harkened back to his school days - coaxing didn’t help, it only frustrated him and goading could be disastrous. Poor Thráin either clammed up or lashed out when he was bullied into answering. The only solution for it, she found after years of trial and error, was patience.

“She’s really…wonderful,” Thráin managed at last, the word pushing past his teeth with clear effort. “She’s fierce and smart and skilled.”

Dóra’s smile broadened. She’d never heard Thráin gush like this about any living creature. Despite Fundin’s objections, it was clear to her that the attachment was a serious one.

Thráin shoved a spoonful of bread and stew into his mouth and chewed a while, staring at Dóra expectantly.

“I’m glad you think so,” she said diplomatically. “I haven’t had much chance to converse with Freya myself - she quite dotes on you.”

‘Dotes’ was perhaps understating the matter; Freya focused on Thráin with a singular attention that was typical, Dóra supposed, of a fierce nature. Likely she and Fundin were much the same when they were courting, though she was sure that Fundin would deny that they were ever so silly over one another.

The color on Thráin’s cheek deepened and he took another mouthful of stew to occupy his mouth in something that wasn’t talking. “What do you _think_ , though?” he muttered when he was finished.

“I don’t know her well - ” she repeated, but Thráin cut her off, frustrated.

“Not about her, just - ” he broke off with a frustrated grunt. “Look, I don’t like many dwarves - that’s not right, I can’t _stand_ most dwarves. I’m not sociable. I’m not kindly - ”

“I think you’re selling yourself - ”

“Shut up a minute and listen, Dóra. I mean, please shut up and listen.” Thráin wasn’t looking directly at her, but seemed to be addressing his low comments to the table, apparently desperate not to be overheard or interrupted, lest he never speak on the subject again. “So, it’s rare, eh? Me liking someone, I mean. And liking them _this much_. And...there are duties to consider, aren’t there? I only mean to say that I can’t imagine liking anyone else the way I do Freya - certainly not as much, never _this_ much. And so I might as well, I mean, I _ought_ to...we ought to…”

Despite the fact that he wouldn’t catch her eye, Dóra was staring at him with unblinking intensity, suddenly feeling her stomach do a queer little flip. Was he...her dear little Thráin who once stubbornly declared that marriaged would be outlawed when he was king (Fundin told her about it in all seriousness, as if afraid he’d make good on his word), was he…

Thráin had fallen silent and Dóra decided to break her usual rules of engagement and prompt him, “Ought to what, dear?”

“Get married,” he said and promptly looked mortified with himself for thinking it.

May the Maker help her, she nearly burst into tears. Nostalgic tears, she was sure, borne of a sisterly affection for the quarrelsome lad she’d grown so fond of when he first came for lessons. Granted, she wasn’t all _that_ much older than him, but the thought of Thráin signing contracts and making vows...well, it led her to wondering where the time had gone. Her heart quite filled up at the thought that he’d found someone he thought he could love enough to marry.

 _Well, he never said he loved her, did he?_ a troublesome voice, reminiscent of her husband seemed to speak in her mind.

But what of that? He mightn’t have said the word directly, but he certainly circled around it enough. And what did it matter if he said it to her? It was Freya who needed to be the one to hear it and Dóra was certain that she did. That she must.

“Don’t you _dare_ cry?” Thráin warned her.

“But I may on the day?” Dóra asked, reining in her tears with only a little effort.

“Look, there might not be a day,” he said rapidly. “I haven’t asked her yet - I might _not_ ask her, I’m asking you. You’re an advisor. Advise.”

“Oh, no,” Dóra shook her head at once. “If you wanted to have a discussion about the weavers’ Guild and their requests to open up trade with that new Ironfist settlement, then I’d be happy to tell you all I think. If you wanted to quiz me about the treasury or the courts or anything like that, we could talk for hours, but this is a matter for the two of you to settle between yourselves.”

For a moment, he looked so irate, Dóra thought he was going to stomp off and leave her to finish her supper alone. Thráin did not, only breathed bullishly out through his nose and frowned at his supper.

“Well, how did you and Fundin go about it?” he asked, his tone taking on a nasty note. “Am I permitted to ask such questions as _that_ , your eminence?”

Dóra refused to rise to the bait, “I was weary of rising early to dress before court.”

“What?”

“Just as I said,” she continued with a small, sly smile. “When your uncle and I spent the night together - ”

“Ugh.”

“Well, you did ask - anyhow, you know Haldr and you know how pleased he would have been if we took up together at my home - ”

“I’m not listening to you anymore.”

“We _thought_ ,” she continued cheerfully, “that I might as well reside with him permanently. And that if I was to move into Fundin’s rooms, we might as well get married. That’s all, really. It wasn’t as grand as the songs would have it.”

Amazingly, despite his protestations that he was not listening to the tale, Thráin actually looked relieved. “So, that’s it? I can just ask? We can just talk about it?”

“Certainly!” Dóra nodded. “There’s no need to make a grand fuss - about the engagement, anyway. You and I both know, there’s no telling what your father will want to do for you afterward. Best brace yourself for that before you ask.”

“Well, I suppose there’s no need to panic yet,” Thráin replied, tucking into his supper with elevated spirits. “She might turn me down.”

She did not.

Miraculously, Thrór managed to be circumspect in his handling of the affair. Partially, this had to do with the fact that Freya, unlike Fundin and Halldóra, wanted some say in the ornamentation of the Hall, the menu for the banquet, and the musicians hired for the celebration of the wedding. And, partially, this had to do with his wife and his court scribe reminding him that Thráin would absolutely loathe too much attention and too grand an affair to celebrate his marriage.

And, partially, there were the goblin skermishes in the Iron Hills that had been occurring with greater and greater frequency. In the end, they quite aided Thráin in enjoying his dream wedding; fewer than fifty guests, with no lavish feast at all, nor dancing, nor music for days to celebrate his nuptials. Indeed, when word first reached Erebor that the young prince was grievously wounded in the fighting, the Mountain feared that there would be no celebration at all.

He was in a bad way when he was brought to the Healers under the Mountain, having been dosed with powerful medicines to keep him sleeping on the road. His father the king stayed by his side all the while and it was that, the people said, that made Thrór’s beard go to grey at last.

Thrór dictated a brief missive to his wife and his son’s wife-to-be, telling them that Thráin would live and return to full strength in time, though they had been unable to save one of his eyes.

Freya, grieving the fall of her own father to the goblins, was unsatisfied with so short a note. After she received it, she did something that she never had before; she sought out Halldóra of her own free will.

“Your husband is Captain of the Guard,” she said, cornering Dóra on her way out of the scriptorium. “Does he give greater accounts of the men than does the king?”

Only slightly taken aback, Dóra shrugged a little helplessly and said, “He doesn’t write much, I’m afraid, when he’s gone campaigning. He thinks a wee scrap of cloth ought to suffice - I don’t agree, of course, but that’s why I’m a dwarf of letters and - ”

“So you haven’t heard anything,” Freya interrupted her, blinking back frustrated tears. “Not a word of Thráin - _ooh_ these Guardsmen! The Queen is just as bad, for she read all, glanced it over more like and said, ‘Well, he’s down an eye, that’s hardly the worst,’ as if it wasn’t anything more than a little trifling cut!”

Freya had begun to pace in front of Dóra and, being a big, broad lass, Dóra could hardly get around her without shoving her out of the way. Fortunately, with half the Mountain gone to war, she had few pressing engagements. “Do you want to go to the aviary?” she asked gently, catching hold of Freya’s arm. “There’s a chance he’s written.”

There was a chance, a small one, and on this occasion, Dóra found her hopes fulfilled. To be sure, Fundin’s letter was not so long or descriptive as either of the dwarrowdams would have liked, but it was more than a short note.

**Rabbit,**

“Rabbit?” Freya interrupted, raising an eyebrow.

“Just a name,” Dóra replied, tellingly brief. A flush spread over her cheeks and she smiled before she turned her attention back to the letter.

**By now you’ve heard tell of Thráin, I’m sure. Thrór would’ve wrote more, but for the dozens of other such letters as had to be written. Poor lad’s in a bad way and thank the Maker for Náin, guarding him when he fell, pulling him out of the fray. I had to get the account of another and can’t hardly say whether Thráin akwitted himself well - I’m sure he did, though, charged in along with everyboddy -**

“Too right, you’re the dwarf of letters in that family,” Freya muttered under her breath. Dóra chose to ignore her, ascribing her lack of tact to having been much put on of late. She held the letter a little more tightly and read to the conclusion.

**just had a shorter fight. But we routed them good enough. He’s better now, by and by, but they’re keeping him quiet on the journey home. The way it was put to me, they said it was best to speed up the healing without his getting ornery while he’s awake. Smart. You know how Thráin is. Should be home soon after you get this. You’ll see him then, they’ll let him awaken and get back to his contrary self, raising havoc and all. Give Balin a hug and a kiss and all my love for me. Tell him to do the same for you.**

Freya was quiet a long moment. Then, oddly, she laughed. “I suppose I do know how Thráin is,” she said, mostly to herself. “Still. He won’t be happy when he wakes. And he’ll be melancholy after.”

“Well,” Dóra folded the letter, “to be honest, no one’s raised melancholy into as much of a craft as Thráin. If it wasn’t this, it was bound to be something.”

Dwarves enjoyed a curious kind of gallows humor during times of war. Freya gave Dóra a curious kind of sidelong glance, as if re-evaluating her. Then, slowly, she smiled.

Though it would be an overstatement to claim that Freya considered Halldóra a bosom friend afterward, relations between the two took on a warmer tone as they awaited the warriors’ return. She smiled and nodded and greeted her if they passed one another on the street. Once, she even dined with her, though Freya most often was to be found in her own mother’s company, acting as a consoling presence following the news of her father’s passing. Though the night the warriors came home, no one saw Freya until the morning.

Halldóra waited until Óin gave her permission to look on on Thráin. He was lying abed, very still and quiet in his own room. There was a single candle to illuminate the whole place, so the effect was very dim.

“Who’s there?” he asked sharply the moment Dóra opened the door.

“It’s only me,” she said, crossing to the bed. “And I’ve been very worried about you, so you won’t turn me out.”

“Hmpf,” Thráin grunted, turning his head to look at her. His face really did look very bad. The bandages had been taken off and the flesh that had been burned had a shiny, pink, puckered appearance, though the place his eye had been looked worst of all, shadowed and covered with the scars from a surgeon’s knife. “Ama claims I look very well.”

“And so you do,” Dóra said firmly.

“I don’t _see_ very well.”

“Nor do I,” she replied, sitting down next to him upon his bed. “You’ve one good eye and I’ve two bad ones. Now you can sympathize with me.”

Thráin snorted. Then, saying nothing about it, he sighed and lay his head on her shoulder. “Freya’s father - ”

“I know,” Dóra sighed heavily, patting his hand where it lay against the bedclothes.

“Yours too, I think. To the drake in the South.”

“Aye,” Dóra replied carefully. “I was very much younger.”

“Did he fight bravely?” Thráin asked. “Your father?”

“So they said,” she replied steadily. “It was a long while ago, now. But they said he was as stout-hearted as any on the battlefield that day. He had bad eyes too.”

Thráin sat quietly. Then, in a rush began, “I don’t think that I - “ but he stopped himself just as quickly.

Dóra tried coaxing. “Don’t think what?”

He lifted his head from her shoulder and turned away so that he could not see her. “Never mind.”

And so it was to be a quiet wedding, attended by the groom’s extended family, the bride’s mother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins, and those members of the court and Guard that Thráin counted as friends. That, combined with Freya’s own larger collection of craft-mates, made for a rather small turn-out. Thráin was clumsy when he picked up the offering wine and it spilled onto the floor, some splashing onto the hem of Freya’s coat, which she deliberately chose not to notice.

It was a far solemner affair than Dóra and Fundin’s own wedding had been; but then, Thráin was a solemn dwarf. She supposed it fitting.

“Let’s hope that’s the worst trouble as ever they face,” Fundin sighed later, when Balin had been put to bed and his wife was taking off her wedding finery, laying by her jewels and heavy coat. He’d warmed up to the idea of their marriage, given time to think about it - and a strict warning from his wife that he was _not_ to give Thráin any opinions that were unsolicited.

“Let’s hope,” Dóra echoed, smoothing her hands over her stomach unconsciously. What with the war, the wedding, poor Thráin’s injuries...other matters which might have weighed on her mind had quite fallen by the wayside.

“Alright?” Fundin asked, looking her over critically. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

Dóra looked up at him, mouth slightly parted. “It’s...it might be nothing. We’ll see.”


	43. And Baby Makes...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** For mentions of **miscarriage** , **blood** , and **birth-related trauma**.

Balin fancied himself quite the knowledgeable dwarfling, and he fully intended to grow his reputation. He always shot his hand into the air first at lessons (occasionally waving it about when his fellow classmates were too slow in responding if his teachers made the mistake of calling on them instead of him), nearly always jumped in with his own explanations and opinions whenever a question was asked in his general vicinity, and prided himself on knowing all there was to know about everything.

It was therefore troubling to him to be kept in the dark about goings on in his own family.

It was obvious - to _him_ at least - that his mother was going to have a baby. She _looked_ as if she was going to have a baby, anyway, her stomach was very round beneath her tunics and robes and many was the night she did not retire to her study to work, but instead sat upon their sofa with her feet up.

Yet no one had _said_ anything and to Balin, who did not think a thought was worth having if it was not spoken aloud, it was extremely vexing to find his parents so uncommunicative about something that was going to have such a great impact on his life.

He had every intention of asking his Uncle Haldr about it, since if there was anyone in the Mountain who was a better informed dwarf than even Balin himself it was Uncle Haldr, but he didn’t have the opportunity for Uncle Haldr had gone away. There had been a terrible fire in the archives of the Iron Hills (which Uncle Haldr said must have been the librarians’ own damn faults for allowing open flames near flammable materials) and they needed aid conserving and rebuilding their collection.

He hadn’t wanted to go. He hadn’t wanted to go at _all_ , but Uncle Thrór asked if he would please go as a personal favor to him since he didn’t know anyone better suited to the task and Lord Grór would be so appreciative.

Uncle Haldr hadn’t been appreciative. He’d packed his bags, using a lot of words that Balin wasn’t allowed to say until he was seventy-five. And Balin wasn’t appreciative either because that meant he didn’t have a minute alone to ask Uncle Haldr his most burning question, for Ama had helped him pack and he couldn’t very well ask with Ama in the room. Balin reasoned he couldn’t ask either of his parents directly; if they’d wanted to talk about it, they surely would have told him before now.

“It’ll take years,” Uncle Haldr complained, not for the first time. “Years! Wasted!”

“They’ll likely give you a bust for your troubles,” Ama pointed out calmly. “Surely the sculptors can very cleverly rig it up so it doubles as a water pump. Then you can save the archives twice over, they’ll name a wing after you.”

“I don’t want a wing named after me _there_ ,” Uncle Haldr grumbled. “I’ve my own affairs to mind and they take up quite enough of my attention. Imagine! I’ll be gone a fortnight and I’ll get word to turn right around and come back because my own library’s burnt to a cinder.”

Ama smiled and patted his arm. “I’ll look after it for you.”

Uncle Haldr frowned at her. “Look after yourself, thanks, you’ve got _far_ too much to do.”

And then he frowned harder at her belly and Ama shrugged and Uncle Haldr kissed her forehead and no one said a word about it. Balin, who had been doing as he was bid and sitting quietly while his mother and uncle packed, couldn’t help letting out a little huffing sigh. Was no one going to _say_ anything?

Eventually, in desperation, he turned to Thráin. Thráin wasn’t much of a talker, but he did talk to Balin. And he was one of Ama’s best friends _and_ a cousin besides.

“Is Ama having a baby or isn’t she?” Balin asked him when Thráin came to fetch him after lessons.

Thráin looked at him, startled. “What?”

Balin blew out a huge breath and sighed dramatically. “Is Ama having a _baby_? No one will say anything, but I know she is!”

Thráin paused so long that a family behind them asked that they step aside and not bar the roadway. They did so and after moving, Thráin found his voice. “Er. I suppose so.”

Balin glowered and kicked the ground lightly with his foot. “Hmm. Alright, then.”

“She didn’t tell you?” Thráin asked, the mutilated spot where his left eyebrow once was raising in surprise.

“No,” Balin said in a tone that implied that if Thráin had to ask, he was being stupid. “Nor adad. They haven’t said anything, but she’s awfully skinny, you know, so I _noticed._ ”

In truth, Balin was more upset by the fact that he was to be welcoming a new baby into his family than he was the fact that his parents’ were determined to keep him in the dark about it. He did not _want_ a baby (not that he had been consulted!). Babies were messy and smelly and took up far too much of a parent’s valuable time. And Ama and Da were both _very_ busy dwarves! Why, even then, both were wanted at court which was why Thráin had come to fetch him from lessons.

Da often spent his nights walking round the Mountain, scaring enemies away, he wasn’t about for bathtime or storytime. Ama spent the daytime at court - granted, Balin was away too, having lessons, but that just meant they already had a household of three busy dwarves! A baby was the very last thing they needed. But apparently they were going to get one. And no one had even asked Balin.

“Might’nt be a bad thing, altogether,” Thráin offered awkwardly after a long pause.

Balin favored him with a _very_ skeptical look. “Have _you_ got a baby brother or sister?”

“No,” Thráin admitted.

“Do you _want_ one?” Balin asked challengingly.

There was no help for it - a look of utter revulsion swept over Thráin’s face before he could help himself.

“Well, then,” Balin huffed, in annoyance. “There you are.”

* * *

 

It was true that neither Halldóra nor Fundin had spoken to Balin about the arrival of the new baby. In fact, they’d not spoken much about it at all, not even to each other. Fundin, at odd times of the day or night might wrap Dóra up in his arms with a muttered, “Alright?” to which she would shrug or say merely, “I feel fine,” and that would be the end of it.

They weren’t displeased - far from it. But to give in to the overjoyed feeling that constantly threatened was to court heartbreak, both of them knew that by now. So they tiptoed around the subject, speaking of it, when they spoke at all, as if it was some acquaintance’s gout complaint; a topic of some interest, but never for more than five minutes at a time and only brought up very infrequently.

Balin had celebrated his seventh Name Day the year before. Dóra hadn’t been with child for almost ten years. They’d largely resigned themselves to the fact that Balin would be their one and only. It wasn’t so terrible a prospect, he was a good boy, sweet when he chose to be and very bright, which was a point of pride especially for Fundin. But they did _miss_ him, now that he was in school for so much of the day. And Balin prided himself on his independence, he liked to take his bath, then read himself a story before bedtime most nights. His parents would be lying if they said they didn’t sometimes long for a time when Balin was not quite so self-sufficient. But it had been more than twenty years since he enjoyed being rocked to sleep.

They did long for another child, they had done for years. They simply could not allow themselves to look forward to it. Not again.

Balin’s cradle, long ago relegated to an antechamber that held broken weapons Fundin intended on mending _someday_ and half-full bottles of ink that had gone dry, was not brought out, even as Maeva predicted the child’s birth would soon be at hand.

It was tremendously difficult, this trying not to get attached, but Dóra did her absolute best. She tried to think of the creation of this child like the creation of a court document - tremendously important, of course, and an incredible responsibility, but not something she would put her heart and soul into, like a manuscript of her own imagining. And she had a treacherous imagination.

The babe was certainly active - reassuring, but also irritating when she wanted to sleep.

 _He’ll be an excellent horseman,_ she thought to herself idly as she shifted in bed for the fiftieth time in a night. But no sooner had the thought crossed her mind than she felt queasy at it; he mightn’t be anything at all, after all.

The thoughts came at other times too, _Let’s hope he has blue eyes,_ she thought more than once. _And the vision to go with them._

_Perhaps he’ll take a liking to script._

_I hope I’m only overeating and he’s not actually as big as he seems._

This last thought she voiced aloud on a visit to her favorite midwife.

“Balin wasn’t a tiny thing,” Maeva said as she saw Dóra out of her examining room. “And this one’s likely to be bigger - don’t you labor too long without calling me, understand? It’s tricky doing, delivering large babes, it must be done carefully and under close observation. If you get too far along too fast, there’s risk of tearing and bleeding, but I fully intend to take that well in hand…”

Dóra did not seem to be listening very carefully. She was wiping her spectacles, using her stomach as a buffer when a sudden pain in her side made her wince. “Oof.”

“Is that a lively one?” Maeva added with a small smile.

Dóra smiled thinly back. “So far - he enjoys pummelling my liver, but he’s gotten much quieter, the last few weeks.”

“Running out of room,” Maeva sighed. “You’ll take heed to what I said, won’t you?”

“Oh, aye,” Dóra said absent-mindedly. “Every word.”

Maeva could forgive her the distraction. They were right in the middle of a gathering of the leaders of the Seven Kingdoms, come together in Erebor to discuss matters of war, trade, and society, not necessarily in that order. The Broadbeam lords in particular seemed only want to discuss the state of the road West and had spent much of their time in the council chambers complaining of the length of the journey and wondering aloud why the meetings couldn’t be held in the _West_ next time.

“It’s certainly something to take under consideration,” Thrór said in the middle of a meeting which had been once again diverted by Western grumbling. “I wouldn’t mind crossing the Misty Mountains, why I haven’t been so far West in...has to be nearly forty years, doesn’t it, Dóra?”

“Aye, your majesty,” she agreed. “Thirty-eight years coming up in - in springtime.”

“That’s right,” Thrór nodded, in fond remembrance. “We really ought to go West before I forget how to mount a pony - speaking of! How’s the livestock on your end of the world, Galur? Prices fair or are those Men trying to gouge you?”

The conversation thus steered back around successfully and Dóra let out the little breath she’d sucked earlier when answering Thrór’s question; it seemed the babe had grown tired of his confines and was preparing to escape.

 _No matter,_ she thought, confidently taking up her quill to continue the minutes. _Balin was four days in coming._

Another sharp seizing of her womb made her gasp sharply; luckily the assembled Lords and Ladies were so busy arguing over the proper levy for above-ground tolls that they did not notice. Thráin, who was seated on her left, did.

“Are you alright?” he muttered, looking at her with alarm quickly spreading across his face.

The pain was gone almost as quickly as it had come on and Dóra managed a smile for him. “Fine, fine, just little twinges, nothing to worry about.”

Thráin did not look soothed. “Should I fetch a healer? We can call another scribe - ”

“No,” she hissed at him, urgently, but quietly. “There’s not a chance I’m interrupting these proceedings, not when they’ve finally begun talking about something. It’ll be fine. Just fine.”

And so the meeting went on through its allotted time. True to her word, Dóra did not once interrupt. However, she did remove her left hand from where it had been resting in her lap to grip the side of her chair. Then to gripping Thráin’s hand. By the time the meeting was adjorned, his hand was numb and his fingertips purple.

“I’m calling a healer!” he announced once their guests had all cleared away and gone to take their supper. “I’m calling a healer right now!”

“No, no,” Dóra released his poor cramped fingers with an apologetic expression. “It’ll be for nothing, honestly, these things take days and there isn’t any hurry - ”

She made to rise and was conscious of a release of pressure then an unfortunately warm, gushing that soaked her trousers and the seat beneath her.

“I’m getting a healer!” Thráin shouted, running out of the room in a panic.

All her protests clearly useless, Dóra grit her teeth against a tremendous rush of pain and thought, _Well, at least we didn’t have to hear about ‘shoddy Eastern roads,’ again._

Things progressed very quickly after that, worryingly so. Dóra made it back to her rooms under her own power, with frequent stops when the labor pains were upon her. Most distressingly, Maeva was unavailable for her delivery. The messenger informed Thráin that she was attending another birth, he’d missed her by three hours. Instead, he returned with three different healers, one of whom was Óin - who, incidentally, was the seniormost master among them.

“You didn’t waste any time, I see,” he said to Dóra as he soaked his hands in boiling water.

Thráin grunted in annoyance, “Wasted the whole afternoon, near as I can tell - I _told_ you, we could have gotten another scribe.”

“Aye, another, but would they have been so devoted?” Dóra joked. Then all the mirth fled from her face as she was hit with another, strong pain - she hated to make a fuss, but she did not remember Balin’s birth hurting quite _this_ much.

“At this rate, you’ll have him before midnight,” Óin muttered, thinking to himself that this was not altogether a good thing. Dóra was small-framed, after all and while small dwarves occasionally delivered large babies, the slower they were going about it, the better. “Don’t push.”

“I won’t - ” Dóra promised, but couldn’t quite bite back a cry. Well, she would _try_ not to, but her body didn’t seem to be giving her much choice.

“Do _not_ \- ” Óin started again, but bit his tongue; losing his temper would do no one any good.

Thráin looked at him suspiciously. “Is everything - ”

“Listen, chatterbox,” Óin said sternly. “Either let me concentrate and work my craft or toddle your way out the door - actually, do that in any case, keep an eye on Balin, take yourself out of the way.”

Ordinarily, Thráin would have snapped back some kind of retort, but something in Óin’s face and voice told him that he had better do as he said. He met his uncle Fundin who came barrelling through and almost knocked him to the floor in his haste to join them.

“I came as soon as I heard,” he said, breathless, evidently having run the whole way. “How is she?”

“Er…” Thráin began, shooting a glance over his shoulder. Apparently that was too long a pause for his uncle who shouldered him aside and ran toward Dóra who sounded as if she was in a tremendous amount of pain. Quietly, Thráin closed the door behind him. He thought of Balin, coming home after lessons. And though it was traditional that the family attended a birth, even if it meant sitting outside the door and waiting for the joyous announcement, some inkling in the back of his mind that this might not be a traditional birth made him think that he might take Balin on a nice long walk around the Mountain before they returned home.

* * *

 

Thráin’s instincts, usually so pessimistic as to be absurd, served him well on this day. The labor was progressing very quickly, dangerously so. Halldóra attempted to follow her healers’ instructions to the letter, but the body would do what it would do and this child seemed set upon coming into the world in his own time, not caring about the strain his poor bearing mother was under.

Fundin thought he would much rather be on the battlefield. It was agony, sheer agony to watch his poor wife undergo such suffering and offer nothing more than a hand to hold or an arm to brace against. Some sires offered encouragement, whispered sweet nothings, rubbed soothing circles on their espoused’s backs. Fundin was beyond such comforts, he kept quiet and held his wife. His face, though he could not see himself, had gone white as a sheet.

“Damn!” Óin swore, losing the cool professionalism that had thus far guided his actions. He regained his self-possession almost at once, but Fundin saw almost immediately what had rattled him. Birth was a bloody affair but there was a _tremendous_ amount of blood - so much so that he began to fear for Dóra’s life; her hand within his had gone limp and was cold and clammy.

“Dóra?” Fundin whispered, the first word he’d spoken aloud in an hour. “Dóra!”

She seemed about to swoon, but roused herself at his voice. “Sorry.”

The word came out slurred, her voice was dreamy and far-away.

Fundin looked at Óin who grit his teeth and grunted, “Bad tear, I didn’t want - but that’s the shoulders out - come along, Dóra, once more and - there!”

One of the attending healers swooped in, the cord was cut in a frenzy of activity, Óin didn’t even bother giving the baby a cursory glance, so focused was he on Dóra.

“The afterbirth’s got to come out, that’s the only thing that’ll staunch the bleeding,” he looked up at the third healer and ordered him to massage the womb, and be sure it all came out as _one._ “Fundin, keep her still.”

And through all this, the baby, Fundin realized with a sinking heart, had not made a sound.

This was the fear he’d staved off for over a year, all come crashing down at once. All those conversations they’d never had, the hopes and worries they’d never voiced - there it was, washing over him, stealing his breath and making him think _he_ might drop to the floor in a heap. He would have done so, gladly, if not for the fact that his wife needed him to stay calm.

“May I see him?” Dóra asked, trying valiantly to rise, but Fundin kept her still, encircled in his arms. Her voice sounded stronger now, but he thought that had more to do with the strength of her will than the strength of her body. “Please? He’s alright - he is a he, isn’t he? And he’s alright?”

“Fine, fine,” he whispered into her ear. In his heart he was panicking. There was so _much_ blood, it was like a battlefield and the child still hadn’t cried. Against his will his thoughts were driven back to their first lost one, a little girl, so small and frail she hadn’t the strength to cry in the brief time that she’d lived. “All’s well, be still, Dora, be still.”

“I hoped….” Dóra began, but seemed to lose her words. Her eyes seemed to fight to stay open and Fundin kissed her brow, hushing her.

One of the healers devoted herself exclusively to the babe’s care, she turned him over, face-down and rubbed his back vigorously, murmuring, “Come along, dearie, come along, fuss for us, won’t you?”

“Where _is_ he?” Dóra asked again and Fundin swore he could feel his heart break.

 _Please,_ he prayed, hoping the ears of the Maker were open and there were not too many souls in need that night that he might be heard. _Just this one more. Just give us this one. Please._

As if in answer, the child started to cry, softly at first, but the sound turned to a hearty wail soon enough and all the Healers broke into smiles. Even Óin breathed a sigh of relief, though he did not take even a moment to pause in his attentions, snapping that he needed a needle and thread, _now_.

Fundin looked anxiously down at his wife, growing limp in his arms and nearly shook her, but for the fact that Óin said she must be kept still, “Dóra!” he spoke sharply into her ear and she roused herself enough to blink up at him blearily.

“Talk to her,” Óin said without looking up. “Keep her conscious.”

“D’you hear?” Fundin asked, glancing up at the babe in the healer’s arms. She was wrapping him snugly in a wool blanket, bouncing him a little to quiet his cries. “He’s alright, can you hear him?”

“Good strong lungs,” the healer said. “Just needed his airways cleared ‘fore he could put ‘em to use.”

“I can hear, may I see him?” Dóra asked, beseeching. It killed him by inches to deny her, but while Óin was tending to her she could not rise and Fundin was not about to leave her side, not for a moment. To be frank, he doubted his legs would hold him if he tried to move away, he was so frightened.

“Not yet, another minute more,” he kissed her brow and shook his head, throat tight. The healer, bless her, came to them with the child bundled in her arms. Fundin’s first thought was that he was an unfortunate little creature, head all bashed in on the sides. His face was so swollen and battered that he looked like he’d come out the worse in a fight. But he lived and breathed and turned from that awful purplish color to red, which he took to be a great improvement. Let him have a face only his mother could love if it meant he _lived_. And Dóra would love him, no matter if he looked like a troll, if only _she_ lived.

“There, he’s right there,” Fundin said, but lay his hand atop hers when her fingers itched to hold him. “Not yet, my love, not yet.”

“Who’s he take after?” Dóra asked, squinting at the child.

Fundin was not sure how well she could see, half swooning, her spectacles cast aside, he wasn’t sure how to describe the infant charitably, but Óin told him to keep talking so he would.

“Like me after a bad bout on the training grounds,” he said and could almost smile, almost, he would be happy and take joy in his second son’s birth _only_ when his wife was out of danger.

Dóra stopped trying to hold him, but her head lolled to the side in a vain effort to see him more clearly. “What color are his eyes? Blue?”

Fundin squinted at the child. It was hard to tell, the flesh around his eyes was read and puffy, his eyes themselves were little slits when he did try to open them. “Ah…” he began, but the healer spoke up for him.

“Brown,” she supplied. “Honey-speckled, but bonny and dark.”

“Just like his amad,” Fundin touched his wife’s face gently since her eyes were heavy-lidded and she blinked slowly and drowsily. “Don’t you fall asleep on me.”

“I won’t,” Dóra insisted, stubborn even now. “Not ‘til I’ve held him at last, may I - ”

“Nearly - soon,” Óin said. His hands were slick and covered in gore, it looked like he was wearing a pair of red silk gloves. The sight was enough to make Fundin’s stomach turned over, but he swallowed thickly and focused on his wife’s pale, pale face. “Just about done - water! Salve. And clean bandages. _Now.”_

After another flurry of activity, he sat back on his haunches and declared the procedure over and done with. “To bed,” he ordered, looking up at Fundin and added, “carefully.”

He didn’t need to be told. Fundin lifted and carried his wife as though she was made of glass. Gently, as gently as he’d held Balin when he was newly born, he lay her down upon the bed and rose to fetch something clean for her to wear - her skin was so cold. “Up you get,” he urged, a hand against his wife’s back as he helped her rise to sitting.

“I can - ” she began, but slumped sideways almost immediately.

“You can’t,” Óin ordered, still kneeling in the mess on the floor. His hands were braced on his thighs, leaving red smears against his trousers. “Don’t let’s be stubborn, that’s what got you into this mess.”

Fundin bristled slightly, but got his wife under the blankets, tucking them up to her chin, never minding that they’d need a thorough wash and bleaching. He turned back to Óin just as he saw his nephew making to rise from the floor. It was on the tip of his tongue to rail at him for being damnably insensitive, but he moved quickly to the lad’s side when he saw him sway and nearly collapse upon the ground again

Moving swiftly, Fundin managed to grab hold of his arm, above the elbow and catch him before he fell.

“She’ll be alright,” he said, more to himself than to his uncle. “She’ll be alright, just...she’s lost a lot of blood. A lot. But she’ll be alright.”

The attending healers had swarmed around Halldóra, the girl who had been attending to the baby said she wanted to just see to Dóra’s pulse before she gave her her son.

“Slower than I’d like,” the lass said after a moment. “But not so slow that you can’t hold the baby - I’m just going to put my arm under yours, is that alright?”

“Whatever you want, just let me - ” Dóra reached out feebly and, finally, held the child at last. Then, incredibly, she laughed. “Oh, you poor, poor thing - you’ve had quite a time, haven’t you?”

Must’ve been the laugh that did it. That was what he’d swear later. At least, it was the sound of his wife’s breathless laughter that was the last thing Fundin heard before he collapsed to the floor in a faint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fundin is fully prepared to give up sex forever because THAT was horrible.


	44. Chapter 44

When Fundin came-to, he was lying in bed and Dóra was smiling down at him.

“Have a good sleep?” she asked, sounding rather tired herself.

Sleep. Aye, what time was it? What day was it? Had he missed a shift on duty? Or was he just waking up for one? Nah, wait - the Clans were meeting, he had to stand outside the council chambers until they were done...or was that yesterday? Did he have to pick up Balin from school? Or was Thráin…?

“If you didn’t take a knock on your head, I’d punch you.”

Fundin turned and saw his elder nephew, standing over him and frowning mightily. What was Óin doing here? Had Dóra begun laboring…

Suddenly, the whole miserable afternoon came back to him at once and the room once again swam before Fundin’s eyes.

“It took _four_ of us to haul you off the floor,” Óin continued accusingly. “As a healer, I feel it my professional duty to tell you to give the mince pies alone when next you find yourself in the dining hall.”

Dóra tutted and stroked the uninjured side of Fundin’s head soothingly.

Óin harumphed. “Don’t know what you’re being so sweet about. If he was my husband, I’d push him right back on the floor, going to pieces the way he did.”

“That could be why you haven’t got a husband,” one of the healers teased in a sing-song voice. They were all of them tidying the room and packing away their instruments efficiently. She, it seemed had been given the task of cleaning blood off the stone, which she applied herself to cheerfully. Whether the blood was Dóra’s or Fundin’s it was impossible to say at that point. There might be nothing for it, Fundin’s mind thought sluggishly. There had been so _much_ blood, it was possible the rock had been stained, they might have to commission a mason to re-lay the floor -

“The baby?” Fundin asked, sitting straight up in bed, blinking stars back as he did so. “Is he - ?”

“Just here,” Dóra said, shifting her arms slightly so that he might see his son.

It might have been a result of the head injury, but this time when Fundin looked at the child’s slightly squished, ruddy countenance, he thought he’d never seen anything lovelier.

“Who swooned first?”

Fundin groaned and shut his eyes; the pounding started up as soon as he heard his sister, shouting and running up the stairs. The bedroom door slammed open and Dísa barged right in, cutting a path through the healers and hopping right up onto the bed on Dóra’s other side. The bed he and his wife shared was spacious, but his sister took up an awful lot of room and Fundin found himself flailing in order to avoid being knocked off.

“Ugh, must you?” he grumbled, resigning himself to a small sliver of matress.

“Someone’s got to take charge round here,” Dísa informed him. “Alright, where’s this nephew of mine - ah, so _that’s_ what all the trouble was,” Sigdis said when she got a good look at the baby.

“He’s to be called Dwalin,” Dóra managing to sound tart though her voice was still rather thin and fragile. She had every right to be vexed; while her husband had almost been knocked to the floor, she had practically been squashed. “And leave him be, he’s suffered quite enough today, thank you.”

Dísa laughed and woke the baby from the slumber he’d previously been enjoying. Mercifully, aside from a bit of shifting and snuffling, he did not begin wailing. Dísa wrapped an arm about Dóra’s shoulders and gave her a smacking kiss on the head, “Muhudel - I don’t mind telling you, I think you’re a marvel. My parts hurt just thinking about forcing _that_ through ‘em.”

“ _Dwalin_ ,” Dóra said again, holding him close as she could and kissing his wrinkled brow. “Poor thing, you’d think I’d birthed an orc, with all the fuss and bluster.”

“Well, from the sound of it, he sliced you up as well as any a sabre-wielding - ”

“ _Dísa!_ ” Fundin, Dóra, Óin, and Thrór chorused as one, the latter as he let himself into the room more quietly than his wife had.

“It’s all well and good to chatter on about battlefield wounds,” Thrór chided his wife, “but _not_ when the wounded is still abed - now as for _you!_ ”

He rounded severely on Dóra who sagged next to her husband, clearly expecting to be chewed out for not telling him she was laboring while he was having an important meeting. She was due to be disappointed, however. Thrór held his arms out expectantly and said, “Hand him over.”

But Dóra did not immediately comply with a direct order from her king. “Fundin hasn’t had a chance,” she said, nudging her husband with her left arm. “Go on.”

“I don’t know as he deserves the honor,” Dísa said flatly. “Seeing as how he was flat on his back whilst you were birthing that creature.”

“ _Dwalin_ ,” Dóra repeated again, handing the baby over to her husband. “Keep up that talk, I’ll be sure he knows that Maeva is to be his favorite auntie.”

Dísa snorted, “While he’s still a useless little lump, maybe. Just wait ‘til he’s old enough to wield an axe, then we’ll see who his favorite auntie is.”

The useless little lump opened his swollen eyes for a moment, just long enough for Fundin to get a glimpse of warm brown, just the mirror of his wife’s own eyes, before he closed them again, falling back to sleep almost at once.

“He’s got the fattest face,” Fundin said, without thinking.

“Oh, give him back,” Dóra sighed. “I’m keeping him all to myself until you’re all prepared to be polite to him.”

“Nah, give me a moment,” Fundin said, holding him a little tighter. A sudden rush of feeling hit him all at once. This child was _theirs_ after all the waiting and disappointment, here he was. And he was _well_. And his wife, though she leaned heavily against him and her voice sounded as soft as the flapping of a baby bird’s wing, was recovered enough to be annoyed. It was such a _blessing_ all of it that Fundin’s throat got tight and his eyes burned.

“Spectacle,” Óin muttered as he packed up his instruments and finished picking the blood from under his fingernails. “You’re all an absolutely spectacle.”

“You know,” Thrór advised him good-naturedly, “if you’re going to make a mastery of this, you’ll need to put on a bit of a happier demeanor.”

“Well, he’s _here_ , isn’t he?” Óin shot back moodily. “I’d say I’m a fair master already.”

“Best of wishes on this joyful occasion!” the last of the healers shouted as she made a beeline for the door - the others had fled nearly as soon as their Queen had arrived. They knew enough of their Queen and her nephew to know that if the two of _them_ started in arguing, they did not want to be on the scene either to bear witness or clean up afterward. They fled not a moment too soon.

“Aye, well, it’s a good job _someone_ was here,” Dísa said. “Where’s your amad, anyway?”

“Busy!” Óin snapped. “Tending to another bearing dwarf whose babe likely decide to make his way into the world in a more careful manner.”

His whole demeanor was agitated. The color had risen high in his cheeks and brow and he was breathing as hard as if it was _he_ who had birthed the child, and not merely assisted.

“Óin…” Dóra started, carefully. ‘Do you want to sit - ”

“No!” he said, practically dripping flustered, nervous energy out his very skin. “I’ve got to write it all up - I’ll not be gone above a quarter of an hour and _you_ ,” here he jabbed a finger at Dóra - “you’re not to move a muscle! In fact, I’ll be sending a healer to you this very evening, just in case...just in _case_ , do you understand? And you’re not to do a _thing_ without a healer’s explicit consent, save breathe and blink!”

And with that he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, leaving a lingering silence behind him.

“I’ll check on him,” Thrór said at last. “Send for a flagon of...brandy, I think. For his nerves.”

“Eh, I’ll run for it,” Dísa said, getting up off the bed after giving Dóra a bracing squeeze. “You can linger, see if Fundin or Dóra decide they’d rather let someone else hold Dwalin for a bit.”

“Oh, I was going to send a messenger,” Thrór assured her as they headed for the sitting room together. “I’m not so selfless that I was going to give up _that_ chance so easily.”

The two continued their cheery bickering all the way out the door - which they thoughtfully closed behind them. Thus left alone, it seemed that all of Dóra’s strength (evidently summoned for the sakes of their visitors) left her at once and she slumped down with a gusty exhale against her pillows.

“Dóra!” Fundin exclaimed, alarmed, but she cracked her eyes opened and patted his arm with a limp hand.

“Only exhausted,” she said, very quietly. “A good long sleep’ll set me to rights. Or a steak. Or a bottle of red wine.”

“Do you want me to…” Fundin said, but trailed off. He didn’t want to leave her, not for a moment. She was still so pale.

“Your hands are cold,” he whispered, at last, determined not to wake the child for fretting. The fingers that rested upon his arm felt like five little icicles and he shifted Dwalin to lie comfortably in the crook of his left arm so that he might chafe her hands gently in his own right hand to get the blood back in them.

Ordinarily his wife would reply that her hands were always cold. The fact that she said nothing, made his heart clench and stomach churn. Fundin methodically warmed one of her hands, then the other. He thought she had dozed off and was startled when she spoke, so quietly, he had to strain to hear her beside him.

“Was there a great deal of blood?” Dora asked sleepily, in an almost childlike way.

There was still a worrying dark spot on the floor. It would have to be re-laid. “A great...a great deal.”

“And were you very frightened?”

Fundin swallowed heavily and managed to nod, unseen, as her eyes were closed.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hush,” he said, pulling her as close and as tightly to him as he dared. Kissing her temple he whispered, “Sleep now.”

Dóra was uncannily silent as she slept. Always had been, just breathed with nary a wheeze nor a snort, nor a constant drone the likes of which he was accustomed to hearing when he passed his night among the Guard. Normally it didn’t trouble Fundin any, but nothing about that day had been normal. If he cupped her face in one of his hands, he could feel her soft exhales upon his thumb.

Good as his word, Óin came in - he even knocked before he entered, though he wasted not a word on pleasantries, but walked straight to Dóra’s side, taking her wrist and checking for a pulse, first there and then, to be absolutely sure she was well, in her neck.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” Óin said, keeping his eyes upon Dóra’s pale countenance all the while. The words sounded only slightly forced, and Fundin suspected that Thrór might have prompted the apology in exchange for the spirits.

“Apology accepted,” Fundin said at once. “Trying day, eh?”

“I ought to…” Óin began, then grunted and forced himself to look up at his uncle’s face. “If I’d been thinking more clearly, I’d have summoned another midwife. One more experienced. I thought I could bring it off alright myself.”

“But you did,” Fundin said. “Dwalin’s well and Dóra’s...she’ll be alright. Eh?”

“It was a near thing,” Óin replied grimly. “But aye, she’ll recover. Sleep’s just the thing, but I’ll send up a meal of meat and dark greens.”

“She asked for wine,” Fundin informed him with a half-smile.

“Ha!” Óin exclaimed humorlessly. “Tomorrow, or the next day, if she can stand without falling down. Water’s good enough for her ‘til then. Plain water.”

He then fussed a bit over Dwalin (who managed to sleep right through the poking and prodding and dressing in a little gown and cap), and despite Dóra’s protestations that exclaiming over the babe’s size was rude, both nephew and uncle agreed that there wasn’t a chance of Dwalin fitting into Balin’s Name Day gown.

“Is there a cradle about?” Óin asked, looking about the room when he realized that his uncle had been holding his son the whole time he’d been present and hadn’t made a move to put him down.

“Ah...it’s being stored,” Fundin admitted. And now, with the babe sleeping in his arms, he had to admit that though it was understandable that he and his wife might have been a bit fire-shy about preparing too ardently for the baby’s arrival, they might at least have gotten the cradle out.

Luckily, Óin didn’t seem inclined to needle him about it. “I’ll fetch a servant,” he said, but paused on the threshold of the bedroom door and spoke to someone beyond, “Where have you been, then? Come in, come in, but not too loudly, Dóra needs rest.”

“It went off alright, then?” Thráin asked.

Óin paused a moment, then replied, “In the end all was well. Go on, go on, I’m sending supper up.”

Thráin poked his head in first, followed by Balin who stuck uncharacteristically close to his cousin’s side. “I was going to let him stay overnight with us if...you’d rather,” Thráin informed Fundin.

“No need, no need,” Fundin rose from the bed, Dwalin cradled in his arms. “Come along and meet your brother, Balin.”

But Balin didn’t move, he just stared at his mother, lying limply on the bed. “What’s wrong with Ama?”

“Nothing!” Fundin said, almost sharply. “She’s just sleeping.

Balin frowned, apparently unconvinced. It was true that Dóra did not usually sleep in such a manner, reclining over her pillows. Normally she was scrunched up at her husband’s side, or hidden under the blankets, having burrowed her head beneath the pillows to shut out any shaft of light or errant noise that might dare to wake her from slumber. She still looked terribly bedraggled from her ordeal and, Fundin had to remind himself, Balin had never seen his mother in anything less than perfect health. Not that he could remember, anyway.

“She’s alright,” Fundin added, a little uselessly.

“Are you _sure_?” Thráin asked suspiciously. “She looks awful.”

“Thank you,” Dóra mumbled, sitting up and wincing as she did. “I appreciate your honesty, as ever, Thráin dear. What do you think of your brother, Balin?”

Balin looked torn between actually sparing a glance for the baby and running to his mother’s side. In the end, Fundin made his decision for him, kneeling on the floor and practically thrusting Dwalin under Balin’s nose.

“Ugh!” Balin recoiled. “What’s wrong with his face? He’s so ugly!”

“Balin!” Fundin exclaimed, so loudly that Dwalin woke and started to cry.

“Oh, dear,” Dóra muttered, holding out her arms. “Come here, give him to me, let him nurse, anyhow. Poor thing.”

“But what’s wrong with him?” Balin asked, trotting along behind his father. “Tell him to be quiet!”

Dóra fumbled with the ties of her tunic and said, “Once the swelling’s gone down, he’ll look bonny as a gem, mark me. You didn’t look so handsome as you do now when you were newly born.”

Balin looked enormously affronted. “You said I was a jewel!”

“And so you were,” Fundin muttered as he relinquished the baby to his wife. “ _Then._ ”

That, evidently, was too great an insult to bear. With his mother occupied with the baby, Thráin hovering at her elbow and his father openly declaring that he was of a better disposition when he was a squalling, red-faced, little beast, Balin decided he had enough of them. “I’m going to bed!” he declared, angrily stomping off to his room. “I’m tired.”

Ordinarily Fundin would have gone after him, but frankly, he was too tired to try reasoning with the unreasonable. “Should I make him hold him?”

Dóra looked up at him and shook her head, “Probably, but let’s leave off - he can hold him tomorrow. Or the next day. Dwalin isn’t going anywhere, are you, Dwalin?”

The now-quiet child did not respond. Fundin sat back down on the bed and Thráin quickly bid them both goodnight - if his eyes lingered on the massive bruise blooming on Fundin’s head, he wisely decided not to ask. 

"You know," Fundin commented quietly. "It never crossed my mind that Balin mightn't like him."

"Oh, Balin'll like him," Dóra said confidently. "Just give him time. He can't be more put-out about having a baby in the family than Haldr was. Once, according to his own account, he pushed my buggy onto a street corner while my mother was at a booksellers and left me there."

"He did - well. Actually, I'm not surprised. Sounds like him."

"Aye," Dóra laughed quietly. "It wasn't above a minute, I don't think, some kindly soul pushed me back to my mother. He got a whallop and learned to like me after that. How about you? Any tales of Gróin tying you to a tree or somesuch?"

"Nah," Fundin shook his head. "Everyone loved me. And anyway, Gróin was fifty when I came along, Dísa was even older. They adored me - hated each other."

"I can't imagine," Dóra giggled. Then she sighed and leaned up against her husband, eyes half-closed. "Don't let me drop him."

Fundin wrapped an arm around her, tucking his hand under Dwalin's head - who needed very little encouragement before he got to suckling. Amazing how, not an hour before he'd been struggling to drawn breath. Amazing. "I've got you," Fundin assured her. "All's well now."


	45. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** References to **spanking children for discipline** , but no one actually gets punished.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Dwalin’s head rounded out, his color evened, and he attained an appearance that Balin, exercising his vocabulary called, “tolerable-looking.” His parents, Halldóra especially, thought him an especially well turned-out baby with a remarkably easy-going disposition, especially considering the strain and violence of his birth.

Once Dóra was able to take herself to the privy without biting her lip and blinking back tears of pain, she told the Healers who came to check on the progress of her wounds, that it had all been worth it and she’d be happy to do it again, fifty times, if the result was a dwarfling as delightful as Dwalin.

Fundin let her talk, though privately he thought that while it had all worked out for the best, _he’d_ rather not go through that again. He wasn’t quite sure his head or his heart could take the strain.

“Isn’t he sweet?” Dóra crooned in delight as Dwalin yawned, his pink little tongue making a quick appearance.

“Why doesn’t he straighten up?” Balin asked. Dwalin was curled up in his mother’s arms, limbs drawn in, hands half-hidden beneath his sleeves. The smallest of the clothes they’d acquired in anticipation of his birth hadn’t quite fit, but the next size up was still too large.

“Well, he’s been awfully crowded for a while, it’s what he’s used to,” Fundin replied, sitting beside his wife and attempting to sit Balin upon his lap. Balin wiggled away, content to stand a few paces apart from them all; lately, he’d become concerned that every time he got too close to one or the other of his parents when Dwalin was a bout (and Dwalin was _always_ about) that he’d be asked to do something distasteful. Like hold him.

“He doesn’t _do_ anything!” Balin complained after a long silence wherein both his parents stared at the baby as if he was the greatest thing since plate armor. “Just _lies_ there, he can’t even lift his head!”

“He will someday,” Ama said patiently, as she always did when Balin started in on Dwalin’s faults. “And you were the same when - ”

“I wasn’t,” Balin interrupted stubbornly, folding his arms over his chest. “Don’t say we’re the same because we weren’t and aren’t. I’m better.”

Fundin sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Dwalin’s quieter. There’s something to be said for that.”

“Not so!” Balin countered, ever the little litigator. “He _cries_ , I don’t cry, not when there isn’t cause.”

“He can’t get our attention any other way,” his mother explained. “It isn’t as if he can just tap your Da on the shoulder and say, ‘Scuse me, father dear, but I need to be changed.’”

“That’s not my fault,” Balin said, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “He ought to learn how.”

“Someday - ” Dóra started, but Balin didn’t let her finish before he stomped off toward his room, letting the door slam behind him. Dwalin blinked awake, but didn’t seem inclined to cry. He just wriggled a bit and turned his head, searching out his mother’s chest.

“Likes to eat,” Fundin observed.

“It’s his only pleasure,” Dóra smiled. “As Balin’s observed, he can’t do much else, can he?”

Fundin heaved another sigh and sank back more deeply into the sofa. “I was hoping he would have come round by now.”

“I think he’ll be alright,” Dóra predicted. “It’s not unusual, as I told you, for him to feel a bit of resentment - though, I think I’d call this impatience. He’s only complained that Dwalin’s a bit on the useless side.”

“Still, he’s sweet,” Fundin said, stroking the back of his head.

“Aye, as I’ve said,” Dóra replied. That was her usual reply to any...well, she wouldn’t call them _unflattering_ descriptions, by any means, but any _inaccurate_ descriptions of Dwalin. As a scribe, she strived for accuracy and she thought her friends and colleagues quite forgot their academic duty when they used descriptors such as, ‘enormous,’ when commenting on a newly born baby. Indeed, at his Name Day, more was said about how large he was than how comely a child he was and, as his mother, Halldóra felt more than a little miffed on his behalf.

To be sure, he was large for a baby, but he was still a _baby_ and quite helpless. As Balin observed, his head was scrunched low on his shoulders, his little legs and arms flopped about when he wasn’t neatly swaddled and his dear little face was all infant roundness and blearily blinking eyes. She’d much rather folks commented on the aforementioned little face, or his dark eyes, or his soft skin. She certainly didn’t want him to grow up feeling self-conscious - and, as a dwarf who was still routinely mistaken for a child when she went into a shop with her hair down - she knew it could be damnably annoying for one’s size to be remarked upon too often.

“What are you thinking of?” Fundin asked suddenly. “You look vexed.”

“I’m not,” Dóra shook her head and smiled at him. “I’m only thinking that I’d like to hear more compliments directed his way.”

Fundin laughed, “Aye, I’m sure you would, but folks like him well enough, I fancy. Well, everyone except Balin.”

“I suppose I’m being a bit particular,” she admitted. “Only wouldn’t you rather hear, ‘He’s so darling,’ than, ‘He’s so big!’”

Fundin shrugged. “Doesn’t fuss me either way, I’m only glad they think of him at all.” He put his arm around Dóra’s shoulder and drew her up against his side. Dwalin lost his place, but quickly regained it; eating was not only his sole interest, it was his sole talent. “He is darling, though.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Dóra grinned down at the baby. “See, that wasn’t so hard. If only Adad could be a model for the rest of the Mountain, sweetling, then you’d get your fair share of praise.”

“Nah, I don’t think he wants it,” Fundin declared. “Humble little fellow, he is. Just like his Adad.”

Dóra looked up at Fundin and smiled. He bent his head and kissed her as long and full as he dared - which wasn’t very. In the first place, she could hardly place Dwalin on the floor if the two of them got carried away. And in the second, Óin, staring at some place beyond his uncle’s right shoulder and speaking very fast, informed him that _that_ sort of thing must be discontinued for at least six weeks. It had scarcely been three.

Fundin broke away first and his wife patted his chest with the arm that wasn’t supporting Dwalin. “Soon enough,” she said brightly. “Then we can try for a third!”

Her husband returned the smile, a bit weakly. A third...well, the way their luck was, he hoped his nerves would be recovered in time for a third birth. Another fifty years should just about do it.

Tromping on the stairs met their ears and both Fundin and Halldóra looked up to see Balin coming down with a game board tucked under his arm.

He made his way across the room to them and voluntarily sat upon his father’s knee, holding the board up for inspection. “Draughts, Ama?”

“Certainly!” she exclaimed, lighting up; she and Fundin had decided together that Balin’s little bouts of temper regarding his brother ought to be ignored, but she was always eager to encourage him to come into the family fold once he was in a better mood. “I’ll just put Dwalin down and then we can play...perhaps, if you’re of a mind, we could start you on chess later.”

“Chess?” Balin asked brightening at once. “But you said I was too little last time!”

“That was before you became a big brother,” Fundin said. “We can teach you.”

“I can _teach_ you,” Dóra clarified. “But I’ll warn you, I’m rubbish at the game itself, your Da’s a much better match.”

Balin looked between both his parents, consideringly. “Da can teach me,” he declared solemnly. “And Ama can play with me.”

* * *

 

Dwalin’s first visit to the library was met with universal approval - since Haldr’s departure to the Iron Hills, the stacks were no less efficiently run, but the number of breaks taken to coo over tiny babies had increased five-fold.

“What a little gem!” Gílla crowed, taking the baby in her arms. “Ooh, such a fat little thing! I’m taking him, Dóra, I’m taking him and never giving him back.”

“No, _me_!” Elísif insisted, holding her arms out and waiting impatiently for her turn. “You’ve got three already, I haven’t any at all - ”

“Oh, you’re far too young,” Gílla scoffed, shielding Dwalin away from Elís. “Far too young to have charge of so sweet a dwarfling as this. Nay, he’s mine and there’s not a thing any of you can do about it.”

Balin squinted up at Gílla speculatively. “I could sell him to you. I’ll take tuppence, thanks.”

“Balin!” Dóra exclaimed, swatting him lightly on the shoulder. Gílla only laughed.

“I’d not take him for so paltry a sum - why, it’d be an insult to him! I’m sure this wee lovely costs more than my yearly salary, so I’m afraid I can’t buy him at all,” she sighed regretfully.

“What’ll you take for him, Dóra?” Elís asked slyly.

“More than all the coins in the treasury,” Gílla answered for her. “So, I’m afraid that Dwalin’s got to stay where he is.”

“Which is by me,” Balin scowled. “Ama and Da are going to move his cot into my own room someday, they said. And he snuffles while he sleeps, I won’t be able to go to bed and _then_ they’ll be sorry.”

“He’ll stop snuffling when he’s a bit older,” Dóra informed him, in a rote sort of way which indicated that they’d had this conversation before. “Anyhow, your father snores and I bide it.”

“You’ve got to, you’re married,” Balin scowled.

“That’s true!” Elís sang, coming up behind him and twisting his ears, evidently deciding that if she couldn’t hold one of Halldóra’s sons, she’d settle for teasing the other. “They signed a compact and all, I’ll just bet there was a clause for your father’s snoring.”

Balin rubbed his ear and looked up at his mother, expecting a confirmation of this theory.

“Well, not as such,” Halldóra said. “But there _was_ a clause providing that the marriage would not be voided on account of any bodily harm sustained during combat, and I suppose it would fall under that - Maeva says she doesn’t know more than a handful of dwarves who don’t snore on account of a broken nose and poor Fundin’s has taken a battering more than once.”

“Handsomer for it, though,” Gílla observed.

“Aye, but there’s a punishment for beauty,” Dóra replied. “I think I’d like him anyhow, broken nose or nay.”

“What if he had Thráin’s nose?” Elísif asked, giggling. “Just think! Straight as a stick and short as a nub of charcoal!”

“I’d love him anyhow,” Dóra declared in a pious kind of way. “For I love Thráin, don’t I?”

“Aye, but you didn’t marry him,” Gílla pointed out. “ _There’s_ a difference, eh?”

“Freya married him and that’s good enough for both of them - hush now, poor laddie thinks so badly of himself, I don’t want him hearing anyone going on about his looks,” Dóra said.

“But Thráin isn’t about,” Balin said, swivelling his head this way and that, trying to glimpse him. “So what’s it matter?”

Rolling her eyes, Dóra patted him on the head. “That’s a tricky thing about Thráin - he’s never about when he’s being praised, but he’s bound to turn up when his faults are being mentioned.”

“Rotten luck is all,” Gílla said sagely. Then, raising her eyebrows at Dóra she asked (in a voice that implied they’d had this conversation before, “Or _very_ particular hearing.”

“Stop,” Dóra rebuked her mildly. Then she raised her eyebrows in turn, Gílla waggled hers, Dóra sighed and that seemed to end the matter.

“Alright, you’ve had him long enough, hasn’t she, Dóra?” Elís asked, bouncing a little in her impatience.

“I suppose I have,” Gílla sighed, kissing Dwalin’s hair before relinquishing him to the apprentice. Elís squealed in excitement and hauled the baby onto her shoulder, despite Gílla’s warning to handle him slowly and gently.

Luckily, Dwalin did not seem to mind much either way. So long as he was held, he didn’t care which way round he was, whether cradled in someone’s arms or propped up against a shoulder or settled in the crook of an elbow. In fact, he was so agreeable (in a manner Balin definitely had not been), that Dóra was a trifle concerned there was something wrong.

And Balin simply thought he was dull. “I don’t see what the fuss is all about,” he announced loudly. “All he does is sit there - and he can’t even sit! Ama said I shouldn’t even try to let him sit, he’ll just fall flat on his face and get to crying.”

“But he’s so _darling_ ,” Gílla cooed with mischief in her eyes - being the mother of two sons, nothing pleased her so much as winding up little boys who she did not have to then take home with her. “Look at his dear little face! Those cheeks! Those eyes! I could just look at him all day and not grow tired of it.”

“That’d be a lazy day indeed,” Balin said huffily.

Elís’s mouth dropped open while Dóra let out a horrified, “Balin!” at his blatant rudeness and disrespect to his elders (nevermind that Gílla was one of her closest friends). But the other ‘dam only laughed, not a trifle put off by being on the receiving end of such hostility from one so young.

“Off with you,” Dóra said crossly. “Find yourself a few things to read, then we’re off - and if you let that tongue of yours get to wagging it’ll be to bed with you, no supper and no reading.”

At this threat, Balin made a great effort to button up his lips, screwing his face up and stomping off, bidding no one a respectful goodbye.

“He’s lucky you didn’t give him a smack in front of everyone,” Elís said, valiantly lifting Dwalin up again, as he’d begun to sink down into a little ball of limbs. “My fathers would’ve got me good.”

“He’s been in a bad mood since Dwalin was born,” Dóra lamented. “I don’t think all the smacks in the world could knock him out of it.”

“It’ll pass,” Gílla reassured her, sagely. “They aren’t so close that Dwalin will pay much interest to Balin’s things, anyway, that was where my lads came to a crossroads. Oh, they got on grandly ‘til the little one learned to crawl and started after his big brother’s toys. Balin’s just a wee bit jealous at the attention, I’ll wager it’ll blow over before the year’s out.”

“The year?” Dóra asked, alarmed.

Gílla shrugged, “Well, I said it’d pass. I didn’t say it’d pass _soon_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sibling rivalry begins early, sometimes.


	46. Chapter Six

When Dóra, hair tumbling round her shoulders, already late for court was attempting to change Dwalin, coax Balin into brushing his teeth, and wiggle her feet into a pair of boots, took time out of her hectic morning to look up at Fundin and say, with a strained smile, “One more week!” he hadn’t any idea what she was talking about.

He had been shucking off his armor, elbowing his way in to continue dressing Dwalin while Dóra personally marched Balin to the sink, standing over him as he glumly worked bicarbonate of soda into his teeth while she looked over his head into the mirror to make herself presentable. He’d scarcely had time to puzzle over her meaning as she walked Balin to school and paused to kiss him and Dwalin on her way out the door.

In fact, it wasn’t until he was listening to Dwalin fuss in his cot while he crawled around on the floor looking for his little coral ring that they forced into his mouth to keep him cheerfully suckling that it occurred to him that she had been referencing the limitations that had been placed upon more intimate interactions than chaste embraces and hasty kisses on cheeks. Then the worry set in.

She might’ve been recovered and ready, but Fundin was by no means certain that _he_ was. It had been quite a scare, after all. And while he could not deny that his ardor for his wife was strong, it had been...dulled a little bit. Not in anticipation of the act itself, but what the act could wrought.

Unbidden, his mind traveled back to a half-remembered conversation he’d had with his mother-in-law. Fundin could exist for blissful weeks forgetting about her entirely, but when he did chance to think on her the recollection always twisted his guts with something unpleasant. But he did recall that once, before his marriage, she’d made some pointed jab about how ill-suited they were. He, a warrior born and bred, and his daughter a scribe. A homebody. A _weakling_ he’d thought she meant and was offended on his bride-to-be’s behalf. But now, though the thought repelled him, he found himself wondering whether Dómarra hadn’t been at least a little bit right.

He did not consider his wife weak as _such_. Small and mighty, rather. She was _brilliant_ , after all. Of the two of them, he’d always considered her the superior. It wasn’t every day that one encountered a dwarrowdam who was as beautiful as she was intelligent and as kind as she was beautiful. And yet, Dóra, though she was a paragon in his eyes, was...small. And slight. And not exactly a dwarf battle-Made.

And this business of birthing babes was...dangerous. Or, at least, it certainly could be. And he’d been witness recently to an absolutely terrifying example of those dangers. He’d been practically beside himself when balin was born and, comparatively, that was a stroll through the caverns. _This_ time, when he thought he might...when he remembered she’d come so close to…

Dwalin was sucking away sleepily at his coral in his cot, but Fundin picked him up and risked waking him. He absently stroked his fingers over the baby’s head, petting his sparse, fluffy brown hair. He was worth it, of course. Dóra said so over and over again as she happily kissed his little face and fingers and toes. And Fundin quite agreed with her. He was worth it, this time, when all had gone off well. But what if all did _not_ go well next time? Could he bear it?

 _No,_ Fundin thought, careful not to squeeze the baby too tightly, though his grip was a trifle firmer than need be in any case. _I couldn’t. Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t manage. Not without her._

“Two’s a fine number,” he said aloud to himself. Two good little lads, though Dwalin had yet to master sleeping while his parents slept and Balin could be an obstinate a fellow as his Uncle Gróin. What would they do with a third? What need they of a third?

But even as he turned the matter over and over in his mind, Fundin felt a small piece of his heart, not already taken up with love for his wife and sons, give a little lurch of disappointment. Dóra loved children so. As did he, if he was honest with himself. And wouldn’t it be something to be blessed with a girl?

But it mightn’t be, he reasoned again, pacing the room with Dwalin in his arms. After all, they’d gone to bed without a sheath for years and years. And it had come to naught so many times. Well he remembered their disappointments, though the sting was somewhat lessened, he had to admit, with a hale, hearty lad to show for it now.

He ought to talk it over with Óin. Óin’d give him a good measure of risk - but then, he _hadn’t_ , had he? Just a little over a month, that was all they were meant to wait and that was only so Dóra could heal up some. Hadn’t said a thing about other children. Whether it ought to be tried for. Was omission the same as permission?

Could be Óin wasn’t speaking strategically. Healers weren’t in the business of long-term planning. They patched a body up and let it do what it liked. And dwarves were so tough that often, no further information was needed once a cut healed over or a bone was mended.

Fundin found himself approaching the matter as he would a battle. If he had a lassie or a laddie under his command who’d been twice tested and come through badly on the second time round, it did not necessarily mean that they ought to be removed from combat. Dóra had been brave, after all. And she’d fought valiantly to the end.

But she’d also come in unprepared - after all, just because one birthed a child nearly forty years previously, it did not follow that the second birth would be the same. Just like a battle, no matter if it was fought against the same foe, they didn’t all proceed along the same course of action. She’d not called in the cavalry when she should have. She admitted she’d made a mistake there. But admitting error meant that one could correct the behavior next time.

Next time.

Fundin heaved a sigh and looked down at Dwalin, who was beginning to wake. Doubtless he’d be hungry soon and Dóra would return and he probably ought to say something, speak up, have it out with her.

But Dóra came traipsing in as expected and took Dwalin from him and all his resolve fell away. How could he even broach the subject without paying her deep insult? He had no way with words, he was sure he’d muddle it all, make him think he _blamed_ her in some way. Or thought she wasn’t strong enough to have more children when he knew she - _they_ \- wanted more children.

So he kept his mouth closed as she fed Dwalin. Took himself to bed at her suggestion. And when she didn’t give him another winking reminder that the time limit placed over their marriage bed would soon be run out, he did not mention it.

* * *

 

Fundin was behaving peculiarly. Halldóra was in the habit of reading before bed, a practice which Dwalin seemed determined to quash, at least temporarily, but Fundin had never seemed impatient with it. Sometimes he even asked her to read aloud if he thought the book one that was likely to entertain him. Such had been his habit in the days leading up to Dwalin’s birth.

Yet now he seemed to have lost his interest in her reading. No sooner would she put Dwalin down and pick up a book than he leaned over next to her in bed, kissed her goodnight and settled down to sleep.

She just couldn’t account for it. It was so...abrupt. Like clockwork, the moment Dwalin was in his cot and Dóra herself reaching for the bedside table, Fundin would dart in, like an eel, sneak a kiss and seemingly immediately drop off to sleep.

Perhaps he was a trifle overworked, she thought. But when she mentioned bringing Dwalin along with her to the scriptorium, he looked at her strangely and said there wasn’t any reason for that, he enjoyed spending him with the babe and wouldn’t like it ended without cause. And yet, that night, the same practice was repeated: feed Dwalin, pick up a book, receive a brief kiss, then read along to a symphony of snores.

When, after a particularly exhausting day, she announced, “To bed, I think,” just as soon as she had Dwalin settled, Fundin did not alter his practice.

“Just as you will,” he said, then kissed her, bid her good-night, and rolled over.

“Don’t I get to kiss you back?” She asked, teasingly. But her only response was the heavy breathing of one deeply asleep.

The next day, she asked Dwalin about it, for all the good it did her.

“What’s the matter with your adad, hmm?” She asked as she coaxed a belch out of him. His only response was to spit up half of his latest meal on her shoulder, but she had expected little more from him than that.

Since Dwalin was doing so well, visits to the Healers took on the air of social calls more than anything else. And it was a good thing too, for the next time Dóra was in Óin’s company, she resolved to speak to him about Fundin.

And Óin, showing the professional decorum that was his trademark, laughed in her face.

“This is rich,” he said, rolling his eyes as he marked Dwalin’s weight, height, and all the other little particulars Healers liked to keep track of when it came to charting a wee dwarfling’s development. “Coming from you, I mean. Fundin, overworked. Last I checked he only took care of smithing and guarding, not scribing, and script, and minding books, and acting as counsel, and, oh, there’s the wee matter of doing all that _around_ nursing a child - ”

Dóra waved his concerns off with fluttering fingers and a sigh. It wasn’t the first time she’d be accused of pursuing too many different things at once and it likely wouldn’t be the last. But they weren’t talking about her, were they, they were meant to be talking about Fundin.

“With the exception of my work at Court, my time is very flexible,” she reminded him. “And I only _aid_ with the running of the library, I don’t _work_ there.”

“Using different words doesn’t matter much if it all amounts to the same thing,” Óin retorted.

“Ah, see, there we’re bound to disagree,” she said, her smile a little sharp. “And as language is _my_ area of expertise, I’ve got to conclude that it’s more likely I’m right than you are. Anyway, about Fundin - ”

“So he’s taking himself to bed earlier than usual,” Óin repeated. “Perhaps he fancies an alteration in his schedule. “I don’t wonder, him taking the midnight watch all these years. No sooner has he bedded down with you than he’s up again three hours hence to take the watch.”

The phrase ‘bedded down’ struck Dóra as particularly on the nose, though Óin couldn’t know it. Actually, Fundin had only been going to bed _beside_ her, not _with_ her for weeks now. Maybe longer than weeks.

“Your mouth is doing something queer,” Óin informed her when she was quiet for a minute, puzzling things over. “Doesn’t suit you, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“I don’t see what my mouth has to do with anything,” Dóra said, thinking back. Two months...three? Could it have been three? Well, aye, of _course_ it was! For Óin was desirous of seeing Dwalin monthly, for the first year of his life, just to be sure he was getting on alright. And this was their third visit.

“Well, if you don’t want folk looking at your mouth, grow a mustache,” Óin advised her, filing away his papers for future consultation. “Anyhow, Fundin’s a big, strong, strapping fellow and like as not he’s old enough and hale enough to make up his own mind about when he goes to bed. I wonder he doesn’t give up that shift and demand hours more in keeping with your own. He’s given over fifty years to the Guard, he’s Captain, he ought to be permitted to dictate when his time’s used.”

“He likes having the daytime to himself,” Dóra replied absently. “Has done since Balin was a babe, gets him all to himself, they have larks…”

She left Óin shortly thereafter, but was so distracted she almost forgot Dwalin. Luckily Óin foisted him off on her since Dwalin was _far_ too young to serve as an apprentice.

As Dóra took the long way back, favoring a trek through the bustling streets rather than availing herself of an overcrowded trolley, she thought hard on how she could have forgotten that she and Fundin hadn’t had time _entirely_ to themselves for months!

During the enforced abstinence imposed by Óin, she’d been counting down the days, especially at first. But time had gotten away from her and between her admittedly full schedule, plus the demands of an infant, and Balin besides, that looked-to day just passed by without comment. In fact, if she recalled rightly (and she had an excellent memory), she’d gone to bed after Fundin that night because Balin needed help with his figures. Halves, wholes, quarters. She’d wound up cutting up sheets of paper into different shapes to explain the principle. And Dwalin had been particularly fussy.

Not that it _mattered_ , she supposed. And, to be honest, she had not been feeling especially amorous, even when she had been marking the days off in her head as they passed. It was only that she was eager to put the whole ordeal behind her.

Honestly, much of Dwalin’s birth remained a bit muddled. She had more specific memories of the Council than of the birth, especially toward the end. He’d not cried, she remembered that clearly. And he had brown eyes. Those were her only impressions of him from the moments immediately after he was born. And then she had a strange idea that she might have snapped at Dísa, but that couldn’t be right, her sister-in-law hadn’t come round until the next day, hadn’t she?

Well, anyway, it was a rotten time (save for the fact that from it she’d gotten the sweetest gem the world had ever seen) and she was happy to put it behind her. That was what those six weeks had been for, healing so that she could forget all about it and go on with all of her usual activities as they always had done.

And they _always_ had done. Not every _day_...ordinarily. But hers and Fundin’s was an unusually passionate marriage. They were both very _keen_ dwarves. Not that it was everybody’s business what they got up to and it certainly wasn’t any of her business what the rest of the Mountain did with their evenings (or mornings, or mid-afternoons). But, from a few casual conversations with the married dwarves of her acquaintance, she certainly knew it was far more likely than not that the same three month span would not be considered at all strange. Many dwarves could go for years without thinking on _that_ sort of thing, even if they were married. And, naturally, some went a lifetime without thinking of it once, other than a sort of abstract activity that _other_ dwarves engaged in. Much in the same way that Dóra herself thought of keeping animals. Alright for some. Not for her.

But she and Fundin were _not_ so Made and that made his recent change of schedule all the more inexplicable. It absolutely could not be that he did not _desire_ her, that thought never once crossed Halldóra’s mind. She was not a particularly vain individual, but she thought she looked pleasant enough and certainly Fundin thought so. In fact, a few more scars round about her middle, a bit of extra weight on her hips should only have enhanced her allure. And yet he was rolling over and going to sleep.

That she was going to speak to him about it was, in her mind, a given. She had little patience for Fundin’s family’s unacknowledged practice of letting worries fester ‘til someone buckled under the strain and threw a punch or let flow an unbroken string of oaths until they actually acknowledged what was troubling them. She preferred civil discussion to overwrought arguments.

And, anyway, she didn’t fancy going another three months without being touched by her husband.

In the end, Dóra decided for the direct approach. And so, that night, once she’d gotten Dwalin down, Balin’s candle was snuffed, and Fundin had _just_ sat down on the bed, she flung herself across the room and pounced on him.

Now, in general, she could not be counted on to subdue Fundin in any, meaningful way. He was thrice her size, after all, and she wasn’t the sturdiest of dwarves. But the element of surprise was useful in any attack. In fact, he was so startled that he fell backwards and smashed his head against the wall.

“Ouch!” He exclaimed, and Dóra pulled back at once, with a yip of surprise.

“Oh, your poor head!” She exclaimed, remembering that she’d not been the only one to suffer injuries the day of Dwalin’s birth. “I’m so sorry!”

“That’s alright,” he said, weakly, rubbing it and examining his fingers for signs of blood. “No real harm done. What was that?”

A very bright flush infused her cheeks and Dóra suddenly felt her, ‘Mount your husband and force either amour or a confession,’ plan was a little on the weak side. “I just wanted to catch you before you fell asleep.”

“Well, I’m not tired now,” he said, with a tiny smile playing about his mouth. “Catch me at what?”

“Nothing,” she said, then shook her head. “No, only, I mean - haven’t you...did you know we haven’t...I just don’t think you’re as tired as you’re letting on.”

Perhaps it was forty years of marriage coming to play or perhaps Halldóra was an even better communicator than she usually gave herself credit for, but the confusion that had been all over Fundin’s face cleared up instantly. And to her satisfaction, he had the decency to look guilty.

“Mmm,” he said, clamming up and taking refuge in grunts, as he often did when he was uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say. “Ah. Hmm.”

Dóra just sat on his lap and waited. Sooner or later, she knew from experience, Fundin would open his mouth.

“I’ve been meaning to...procure a few sheaths, just haven’t got round to it,” he muttered at last, eyes darting away from her face. “Been busy.”

“What?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. “But we’re married.”

“I do know that,” he said, his face going hot. “Just...ah. Taking precautions.”

“Why?” Dóra asked. There were really only two reasons for a dwarf to wear a sheath - to ensure against the unlikely event of getting a bearing dwarf with child when no child was wanted, or because they were of an amorous nature and somewhat undiscerning about where they got their jollies. Well, there wasn’t any chance Fundin was out mining foreign shafts. So it had to be the former. “I don’t think there’s any chance that we’ll have two under ten.”

“Mmm,” Fundin grunted again. Silence ensued. Then, “Two’s not bad, though.”

Dóra sat back, stunned. “You don’t want any more children?”

There was a wince. A small one. Someone who wasn’t sitting so close to Fundin, or who didn’t know him so well wouldn’t have seen it. But Dóra did. And, being too clever for her own good, understood immediately.

“Oh,” she said, rising off her husband, off the bed, feeling as if all the breath had been taken from her lungs. “You don’t want _me_ to have any more children.”

“Dóra!” He exclaimed, latching onto her wrist before she could get away. “Don’t be cross, it’s not really - ”

“Well, I’m very sorry,” she said, not looking at him, her voice small and tight. She practically felt her heart clenching in her chest and if her husband thought childbearing was a danger for her, clearly he hadn’t thought through practically declaring that he didn’t think her strong enough to even _chance_ it. “That I’ve disappointed you so much - ”

“Disappoint - ? Nay, Dóra, that’s not what I - come back here, come back, I didn’t mean it like - like - ”

“Well, how else did you mean it?” She demanded angrily. She longed to wrench her arm away, but Fundin held her fast and she clearly wasn’t going anywhere. “It was one little incident, I’m well recovered, and anyway, it might have happened to _anyone_ \- ”

“But it happened to _you_!” Fundin declared, voice rising despite the proximity of Dwalin slumbering away in the cradle. “You were the one who labored on all the day long without calling for any assistance - not even bringing another scribe to Council with you, just in case!”\

“So, I took a risk - a miscalculated risk, _granted_ , but it all turned out alright - ”

“But it nearly _didn’t_!” He snapped, pulling her closer to him so that, he sitting and she standing, they were nose-to-nose. “You were half out of your senses with...you hardly _saw_ it, Dóra, there was such a lot of blood and - and - ”

Fundin seemed to lose all capacity for speech and Dóra just glared at him, feeling flushed and humiliated. She was _fine_ , she intended to prove that she was _fine_ and he wasn’t giving her the chance. Didn’t think she could take the risk. Didn’t have any faith in her at all.

“I may not have seen a warcamp, you know, but I’m not made of dross and tin,” she spat angrily. “Nor some woman of Man to be swept away by childbed fever or somesuch ailment.”

“Don’t pretend bearing dwarves haven’t ever been lost on the birthing stool the same as on the battlefield,” Fundin said warningly. “It’s happened before, to say nothing of the children lost - ”

“And don’t you pretend I don’t understand about losing children!” She exclaimed, matching her husband in volume. “But that’s just the thing, isn’t it, you don’t think I’m fit for a battlefield, or for childbirth - ”

“That is _not_ it!” Fundin roared and finally Dwalin woke and started crying, but Fundin railed on, “Don’t you see? You didn’t _disappoint_ me, Dóra, you _terrified_ me!”

All was silence, save for Dwalin’s wails, which went unanswered while they stared at each other. Eventually Fundin dropped his wife’s wrist and Dóra went round to the other side of the bed, picking Dwalin up and settling him against her shoulder until he quieted down.

Balin’s bedroom door stayed shut. Whether he hadn’t heard them or didn’t want to find out what they’d been arguing about was anyone’s guess. Fundin, feeling as if he couldn’t bear to remain sitting a moment longer, went to check on him and found him still and apparently asleep in his bed.

When he came back in, he saw that Dóra’s face was wet and he scrubbed a hand over his own face, rubbed his own burning eyes and sat heavily next to her upon the bed.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, quietly, meaning it this time. “That you were frightened.”

“Apology accepted,” he said weakly. “And I know it was...it wasn’t your fault. But I thought I might have to...to carry on, without you. And it was more than I could bear, Dóra, it really was.”

“But you didn’t,” she countered. “You don’t. And I’m right here. Where I intend to stay until we’re both old and grey-bearded.”

“Well, I’m halfway there, so that’s a poor promise,” he remarked lightly and she laughed, though it was an old and not particularly funny joke. “I just...I want to keep you safe.”

“Well, that’s what you were Made to do,” Dóra replied. “Protect the King, the Mountain, _me_ , but you can’t control all outcomes. You know that.”

 

Fundin shook his head, “Warfare’s inevitable. It’ll come when it comes and there’s nothing to be done, but you...you’re here. Every time I march, I can remember that, you’re here and safe. That’s a comfort. But it never occurred to me that you mightn’t be safe in the Mountain, that I might be beside you and unable to do a thing to protect you against - ”

“But _nothing_ happened, not really,” Dóra interrupted him. “I’m fine, Dwalin’s fine. Just be grateful for that, can’t you? There’s no need to alter our habits or curb our wants just because of what _might_ happen. It’s no way to go on.”

They went to bed shortly thereafter - beside one another - but Fundin wrapped her up tight in her arms and kissed her properly this time. And, for now, it really was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even Erebor's Best Couple fights eventually, right?


	47. The Road Home

It had been forty years since Halldóra herself had gone abroad, she had forgotten about how much <i>work</i> it was, just to step outside the Mountain proper. It had briefly -  _briefly_ , mind - occurred to her that she didn’t need to go at all, that it was really only familial courtesy that prompted her to leave the Mountain, but she was a dwarf, after all. And family was family. 

Haldr had been five solid years gone in the Iron Hills, not even returning home for so much as a visit as he set their archives to rights after a bad fire. His assistance had been invaluable, Grór called for all sorts of accolades and titles to be heaped upon him, the honor of which Haldr had roundly refused.

 

 _I’m reduced to a rag-and-bone man,_  he lamented in  a letter to his sister. _Picking up others’ refuse and trying to make good off it._

 

Grór’s latest offer, however, had been one of permanent employment, which rapidly turned his attentions, in Haldr’s mind, from irritating to intolerable. And so, the very evening that the offer had been made and soundly refused, Haldr wrote to his sister, informing her that he would be on the next caravan out of the Iron Hills in the autumn, set to arrive home just in time for Durin’s Day. For good measure, he asked that she pass that information on to his king.

 _I’d love to come and collect you!_  Thrór had written (himself, for Halldóra was more judicious in her use of emphatic punctuation). _A three-month stay should just about do it, we’ll summer in the East. I might be able to persuade Thráin and Freya to come along with the baby!_

That, of course, had been a statement so optimistic that it was likely that Thrór did not believe it, even as he was writing it. There was no way, Freya said flatly, that little Thorin would see daylight before his fifteenth year and not even an order from her King would make her change her mind about it. Thráin, who loathed travel for its own sake, was very happy to have his infant son to hide behind when he too said that he would stay behind with his wife and child.

“The last time I was in the Iron Hills, I lost an eye,” he grimly reminded everyone who inquired whether or not he’d make the trip. “I’m not chancing it.”

As different in matters of taste and social engagement as Freya and Thráin were, on this issue they formed a united front. Why bother going East? What could the Iron Hills offer that Erebor could not?

“You’d do just as well to stay behind,” Freya advised Dóra when she heard that the court scribe was planning on accompanying the whole group on their venture. “What will you profit by it? You’ll see your brother before the new year, what’s a few more months? What’s waiting for you in the Iron Hills?”

“Well, I’d like to see what improvements Haldr’s wrought out of the disaster in the archives,” Dóra explained. Then, feeling that Freya would not be convinced that examining newly-erected shelves and surveying a catalog was reason enough to walk about aboveground for half a month’s time, added, “And neither he nor my mother have met Dwalin yet.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Freya shook her head. “Your brother can see him when he comes home and...I’m sorry, did you say your mother?”

“Aye,” Dóra replied. “She’s not seen Dwalin at all and only saw Balin last on his Name Day. I did send a portrait along, but that was ages ago. A visit seems overdue.”

“Hmm,” Freya said, almost visibly biting her tongue. Had Dóra mentioned her mother as living only two-weeks journey away before? If she had, neither remembered it. For Freya, who saw her own mother almost daily, it seemed nearly impossible to imagine that another ‘dam would have gone so long without seeing her own. But, she only said, “It certainly does.”

Balin was _awfully_  excited about undertaking such a long journey, and tried to prove that he was up to the trip by underplaying his excitement every chance he got. He was determined to be a big, stoical adult about it - nevermind the fact that he was small for his age and rather undercut his own maturity by asking whether or not Porridge the Bear could undertake the journey with him, not tucked away in his luggage until they arrived in their suite.

And Dwalin...well, Dwalin was content most of the time. He only responded to his mother’s inquiries about whether or not he was excited to go abroad by smiling and clapping his hands. That might seem to indicate approval of the scheme, but that was also Dwalin’s response to being asked if he was ready for supper, if he wanted to visit relatives, if he wanted to take a bath, if he wanted to be picked up, and every time someone called his name.

Dwalin was a handsome little boy - tall for his age and fat as ever, very much his father’s son. He had the lightest trail of brown hair on his cheeks and a matching tuft that stood straight up on the crown of his head. His hair was lighter than Balin’s, his complexion slightly darker, and to Fundin’s dismay, his hair did not curl as Balin’s did, which meant their father could derive less satisfacting from mussing it for it appeared perpetually unkempt.

Also, unlike Balin as a baby, Dwalin was very rarely in a sour mood. He was happy to go with anyone at any time, and enjoyed being passed about and petted and played with by any dwarf under the Mountain - he seemed to consider all strangers as merely being friends he wasn’t acquainted with yet. The only trouble his parents foresaw for him was that since he had learned to walk, he might fuss at being made to sit or be carried the long miles to the Iron Hills. If ever there was a criticism to be laid at Dwalin’s feet, it was that he was a very busy child who did not like confinement or idleness.

“You’re going to be a good boy, aren’t you?” Fundin asked the night before they were set to leave, tossing Dwalin in the air and catching him. “You’re going to behave yourself and be a delight, eh?”

“Eeeeeeeeeeee!” was Dwalin’s reply.

“He says he’s always delightful,” Dóra translated for him. Dwalin often required a translator wherever he went; currently, the only words he spoke with any regularity were ‘Da’ and ‘Ma.’ Squeals and babbling nonsense supplied the rest of his vocabulary. While Dwalin was very vocal, he was not very intelligible. “Just smile, sweetling, and that’ll set it all to rights.”

As if he understood, Dwalin turned his head and beamed at his mother. She smiled right back and crossed the room to kiss his chubby cheeks.

“Haldr’s going to hate him,” Fundin predicted cheerfully.

“That’s putting it rather strongly,” Dóra replied, swatting him playfully on the shoulder, but she could not disagree. Dwalin was not exactly everything that Haldr could have hoped for in a nephew. He was rather inclined to make messes, he was affectionate to a fault, and he was <i>loud</i>. None of those things would endear him to his uncle and Haldr was not the sort of dwarf whose heart would be swayed by things like a sweet smile, a friendly disposition and the chubbiest cheeks in all the world. “He might find Balin greatly improved, however.”

“At least in comparison,” Fundin agreed, nuding Balin’s side with his toe.

“I’m right _here_ ,” Balin complained, from his place on the floor where he was hastily completing some schoolwork he’d left until the last minute. “It’s _cruel_  to say such things when I’m right _here_.”

 “Ooh, you poor dear,” Dóra lamented, getting right down on the floor beside him and kissing the second-chubbiest cheeks in all the world. Balin did not appreciate it as much as Dwalin did and wiped any trace of affection from his face hastily. “We think you’re marvelous, of course, but you know Uncle Haldr is awfully particularly.”

 “I don’t know why you make me write to him,” Balin said, crossly. “For he never writes back and only corrects my spelling.”

 “But I’m sure your spelling’s benefitted!” his mother said brightly. “And anyhow, as he’s coming home now, you’ll not have to write to him ‘til it’s _your_  time to go abroad.”

 Balin looked vaguely pleased at the notion that he would one day venture outside the Mountain without his parents in tow - though, at his tender age, it was likely that his vision of his older self still included Porridge as his worthy companion. Smiling, he went back to his studies only occasionally barking at Dwalin to keep _away!_  Since his baby brother had learned to walk, Balin had found him more irritating than ever.

There had been a brief, glorious period when Dwalin was able to sit up on his own but not move very far that Balin found him tolerable. That lasted about half a year before Dwalin worked out how to crawl and, through no malice, crawled directly over a book Balin had left carelessly on the floor beside his bed, tearing the pages. Balin had railed at the baby until his father gave him a talking-to about leaving his things unattended and that Dwalin didn’t know better, so it was really more Balin’s own fault that the book was damaged. Ever since then, Balin was back to regarding his brother as an un-asked for nuisance.

“I still don’t think Dwalin should come,” he said, once his work was completed and placed upon a table, just out of Dwalin’s reach.

“I’m sure no one’ll hate your brother,” Fundin said, rolling his eyes; as the universally-adored youngest child in his own family, he’d no patience with Balin’s prejudices. “But thanks for thinking of him.”

“Uncle Haldr _won’t_  like him,” Balin pressed, coming up next to his father and pointing at Dwalin dramatically, as if that gesture laid bare all his brother’s faults. “He hates dwarflings! And Dwalin’s the dwarflingest dwarfling there ever was! I’d rather we brought _Thorin_  than Dwalin.”

 That was his latest point of attack - to talk about how much better Thorin was than his own brother. To sigh over the fact that, of all the babies in the world, he’d got stuck with the most troublesome. And to conveniently forget the fact that small, quiet babies nearly always aged up into loud, very destructive children.

“We’re not, Freya’d never allow it - and anyhow,” his mother pointed out. “Once Thorin’s learnt to crawl, he’ll be in your things just as much as Dwalin is and you’ll loathe him just as deeply.”

“Aye, but I still won’t have to live with him,” Balin pouted and then, seeing that his very logical arguments were getting him nowhere, took himself to bed.

 “Poor you,” Dóra said, picking Dwalin up out of his father’s arms to carry him to his cot. “However do you bear such ill-treatment?”

 Dwalin’s only response was to grin heartily at his mother, displaying all five teeth. She kissed him again.

 “You bear it very well,” she answered herself. “Let’s hope you’re just as contented to be on the road as you are to be your brother’s main object of scorn.”

Their leave-taking was hectic, but once the caravan was well on its way, travel continued smoothly. They were leaving at the peak of spring, and only had occasional rain showers to delay them. For Halldóra, who generally loathed venturing out of the Mountain, the trip was a pleasant surprise. Dwalin was so distracted by the sunlight and the trees and the birds that he did not mind riding along in a carriage or being carried by his mother or father or one of the Mountain Guard who acted as escorts.

Balin, on the other hand, was afflicted by what the Healer termed ‘hay fever,’ though his parents were assured that it was not a very serious condition and would clear up just as soon as he was safely underground again. In the meantime, it was a sneezy, snuffly, miserable journey for the poor lad - and Fundin, from whom he had apparently inherited the propensity to find the out-of-doors injurious to his health. 

“I just don’t understand it,” Halldóra lamented as they made camp, collecting Dwalin’s soiled clothes and her husband’s soiled handkerchief to send away for laundering. “You’re outside all the time! You see much more of trees and grass and suchlike than I do, I’d have thought you’d be used to it.” 

“Aye, well,” Fundin sniffled grumpily, “I’ve not had cause to tread _this_  road before. The plants here just don’t like me.”

His voice was so hoarse that even his wife struggled to understand the latter part of what he said. Every time he spoke, Dwalin whipped his head around, expecting to find some dwarf other than his father, but when he saw that it was only Fundin, he went right back to pulling up handfuls of grass and throwing them in the air. Thus far his play had been interrupted several times in hopes of meeting someone new.

“Why not this road, Da?” Balin asked, snuffling back a noseful of phlegm before his mother held a handkerchief under his nose and instructed him to _blow_ , not inhale. “I thought you’d been everywhere!”

“Not everywhere,” Fundin acknowledged. “We didn't take a trade route when we waged war in their mines and I don't make a habit of coming by unless there's a war to be fought - though there was talk of sending your Auntie Dísa here for fostering when she was young - ” 

“How’re the invalids?” the Queen herself boomed over their heads, appearing as if she’d been summoned by magic. She crouched down by Fundin, taking in his red eyes and redder nose. “Ugh. Rotten. Poor you.” 

“Poor me,” Fundin echoed, not expecting much by way of sympathy. Naturally, his sister who prided herself at remaining in top form under all conditions and in all weathers, was completely unaffected by the springtime air. 

“Have you come to the Iron Hills before, Auntie?” Balin asked, looking up at her with similarly red and watery eyes. They said that he entirely took after his mother’s side of the family when it came to looks, but now he and his father were a matched set, a picture of misery. 

“Aye, I have,” she nodded grimly. “I nearly was whelped there - as punishment, I was incorrigible. There’s a word for you.” 

“Oh, I know that one,” Balin informed her, occasionally having been described as ‘incorrigible’ himself. “It means you don’t mind, no matter how much you’re told.” 

“Aye, well, I didn’t mind,” Dísa agreed, not sounding particularly regretful. “Not my adad, nor my amad, nor my masters - ” 

“If you weren’t a warrior and a Queen of her people, you’d likely be in prison,” Fundin pointed out with a wicked grin. 

“Can’t argue with that!” Dísa chuckled. She took in a bracing breath of the twilight air and punched Dóra on the shoulder. “Will we get you on a horse tomorrow?” 

“Ha,” Dóra said flatly, rubbing her arm. “No, thank you very much, Dwalin and I prefer to walk.”

“Not this lad!” Dísa exclaimed, plucking him up from the ground and holding him upside-down as he kicked his legs wildly and laughed and laughed. “Nah, I’ll have him riding from here to the Misty Mountains and back before he learns his letters, if you’ll let me.”

“We won’t!” Dóra smiled - smiled because she knew Dísa was joking. Well, she hoped Dísa was joking. Sometimes it was difficult to tell. 

“Wait, I want to hear more about your punishment,” Balin insisted, _always_  ready to perk up and listen when there was word about someone else being naughty. “Why were you to be sent away? Why did your amad and adad change their minds?” 

“It’s a long story,” his aunt replied, setting Dwalin back down upon the grass. “Too long for a retelling this close to your bedding down.” 

“I always get a bedtime story,” Balin retorted with confidence, sure he’d get his way. 

But Dísa only shook her head and got back on her feet, “Nah, it’s a tale for another day, lad. But good try. Let’s just leave it at this: even for the likes of me, my parents thought the Iron Hills was too great a trial.”

“Gróin always said that Da just wanted to keep a closer eye on you!” Fundin called out to his sister’s retreating back. She just shot him a grin over her shoulder and waved as she returned to the perimeter of the camp. 

For the first time since their journey was announced, Balin looked worried rather than merely cantankerous. “Is the Iron Hills a terrible place?” 

Over his head, his parents exchange a look. 

“It’s perfectly nice,” Dóra said, hauling Dwalin onto her lap; he was always easier to get settled after he nursed and she was quite the expert at keeping him still with one hand and opening her tunic with the other.

“Let’s put it to you this way,” Fundin said, grabbing Balin and hauling him onto his own lap for a cuddle, despite his son’s wiggling protests. “There’s nowhere so good as Erebor. But it’s alright. As other ranges go.” 

“But why - ack, Da, stop it! _Stop_  it!” Balin protested as Fundin dug his fingers into his sides and tickled him mercilessly until Balin was breathlessly laughing on the grass. He seemed to forget his questions after that and fell asleep on his bedroll shortly thereafter. 

“I didn’t know that,” Dóra whispered to Fundin when the children were asleep between them and they had a moment’s peace. “About your sister.” 

“I’d have hardly known her when I was little if she’d been sent off,” he whispered back as best he could. “Da - as I’ve heard it said - thought she was too unmanageable. You know, she’s big and she was always strong and quick and she’s got the thickest head of anyone I’ve ever met. She was always testing him and my Ma - especially her, they didn’t get on at all. I’m hearing this all third-hand, mind. But aye, as I heard it, they nearly sent her off thinking if she was in the care of dwarves as weren’t related to her, she’d have to shape up.” 

Dóra shook her head and looked down at her own lads; though they were still very small yet and neither too troublesome, she couldn’t imagine being so vexed by them that she wanted to give them to other dwarves to mind. “But they changed their minds?” 

“Aye,” Fundin nodded, yawning hugely. “So they did. Gróin’s not clear on the details, it wasn’t as if he was involved in the decision. Either my Da thought it’d be too much fuss, more trouble to send her off than it was worth, or they’d only threatened her with being sent off to make her more tractable. Could be he thought it’d look bad for him, Captain of the Guard, not able to keep his own daughter in check. And, let’s face it - no one wants to admit that the Iron Hills has a leg up on Erebor for anything.”

  
“Mmm,” Dóra agreed, wordlessly. It was as they’d told Balin - to the Erebor-born dwarf who valued loyalty there was nothing wrong with the Iron Hills. Only it was a place that they’d rather visit than reside.


	48. Chapter 48

They arrived in the Iron Hills just as the sun was rising over the peaks from which the kingdom derived its name. It was an easy journey, all things considered, but any dwarf worth his beard would be glad to lay his head down within stone after weeks of travel aboveground. The sunlight cast a rosy glow over the horizon, which was all the lovelier when the caravan remembered that they’d not have to see the sun again for months, if they didn’t want to.

Balin was especially exuberant. 

“Goodbye sun!” he crowed at the sky. “Goodbye clouds! Goodbye sky! Goodbye dirt! And _especially_ goodbye hay fever!”

“And double for me!” Fundin added, scooping Balin up and setting the lad on his shoulders. In a tribute to his good mood, Balin did not object to being hauled about like a sack of potatoes, did not protest that he was much too old and dignified for such things, he merely smiled, contented as they entered the gates.

From there, the caravan dispersed. Merchants and visitors all scattered to the roads that would take them to the markets and outlying settlements while Fundin and his family continued on into the heart of the range. 

They were met by Náin immediately upon arriving - that is to say, they were set upon by Náin who came forward, arms outstretched and with a booming voice announced, “Welcome! Welcome! Ah, for the days of Khazad-dûm, eh? You’d not have had to travel under all this _sky_ , but it can’t be helped! Come in, come in, off with those togs - what’ll it be, a bath or a meal?”

Let it never be said that Sigdís Dragonslayer, Queen Under the Mountain and Huntress of Erebor was a dwarf of prejudice. For as much as she had little love for Thrór’s brother, she absolutely _adored_ Thrór’s nephew. Handsome of face, black of beard, and blue of eye, he resembled his uncle rather more than he did his father who had more of a pinched, spindly look about him, while Náin was more robust. And Dísa’d always gravitated toward those who could take a beating and then laugh about it.

Dísa demonstrated this affection by scooping Náin (not a dwarf of slight proportions by any stretch of the imagination) into a hug, lifting him straight off his feet. “A meal!” she demanded with a grin. 

“A bath!” Thrór insisted, taking his turn at enveloping Náin in an embrace, but this time he stayed on his feet. 

“I thought _you’d_ say that!” he nodded in triumph. “We can get down to the business of feasting tomorrow eve - I’ve had your suites made up with meals and hot water all round so everyone ought to be satisfied. And what say you, Fundin? Dóra? You’re looking lovely as ever, by the bye.”

“I look bedraggled,” Dóra declared cheerfully. Náin was an inveterate flirt, which Dóra did not mark nearly as much as Fundin did. It wasn’t that Fundin was a jealous sort by nature it was only that he did not think it necessary for Náin to comment on how very pretty his wife was _every_ time he saw her. Once was enough. Luckily, on this occasion she had someone with her who would divert the attention of any dwarf no matter how complimentary they liked to be around pretty ‘dams.

“And who is _this?_ ” Náin asked, holding his hands out to take Dwalin immediately. Dwalin happily went toward him, thrilled as ever to meet new faces. 

“That’s Dwalin,” Dóra said with a smile. “And he’s looking far better that I.”

“It’s so nice to meet you, Dwalin!” Náin exclaimed, even as Dwalin wrapped his fingers in Náin’s black beard and held fast. He burbled and drooled, to Náin’s evident delight. “He’s a gem! Is he available for fostering?”

“No,” Fundin said flatly. “Honestly, no wonder Men rail on about the greed of the dwarves, first you’re after my wife, then my son - ”

“Who can blame me?” Náin asked. “For you’ve a fine family, and no mistake! That goes triple for you, Balin, my lad! Are you of apprenticing age yet? Going to be training with the Guard while you’re residing in our hills?”

“Aye, sir!” Balin announced proudly, sitting up a little straighter on his father’s shoulders. Fundin glanced up and smiled; to be sure, it was heartening to know his son was eager for a fight, but he would prefer that Balin get a _little_ bigger before he started wielding weapons more complicated than a slingshot or a side-arm dagger. 

“He will,” Fundin nodded. “Just as soon as he finishes learning his sums and letters - ”

“I _know_ my letters,” Balin said, a bit too pertly. “Common _and_ fathertongue.”

Náin laughed. “And that’s all you need, surely! But come in, come in! Aha! And _here’s_ the fellow you’ve been waiting on!”

Five years’ absence had done Haldr neither good nor ill; indeed he seemed to be wearing the same surcoat he’d donned when first he’d gone abroad, though one could only assume he’d sent out to have it laundered occasionally. His hair was as negligible as ever, hardly worth mentioning and his beard was, as always, worn straight and tucked in his belt, a style that had been popular about seventy-five years ago, but that Haldr had maintained both before it was seen on the best of chins and after it had fallen from favor. 

Then again, perhaps he was not as unaltered as he appeared. Perhaps he had even _missed_ them, for though messengers had been sent ahead to announce their coming, neither Halldóra nor Fundin were optimistic that he would actually come and greet them. Yet there he was. 

Haldr squinted over his spectacles at the assembled party, seemingly unimpressed. “I was told there was a child. Where is it?”

“Oh, you mean _this_ child?” Náin asked, tossing Dwalin into the air and making him giggle. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait your turn, I’ve only just got him.”

“Keep him,” Haldr said, drawing close enough to give Dwalin a cursory glance. Just enough to confirm that it was, in fact, a dwarfling. And one likely belonging to his sister since she claimed to have birthed it and it was the _graven_ image of Fundin. 

Unfortunately for Haldr, Dwalin seemed to have different ideas. Upon seeing a new arrival to the scene, he stretched his arms out, expecting that he would be picked up and cuddled immediately. Haldr only frowned.

“Aww, love at first sight!” Fundin crowed cheerfully. Over the years, he’d developed a reflexive teasing optimism to counter Haldr’s relentless disatisfaction and derived great pleasure in making his brother in law _almost_ as uncomfortable as Haldr made him. “Go on, give him a kiss.”

“No,” Haldr replied, folding his arms. 

“Alright then, have the other one,” Fundin said, flipping Balin neatly off his shoulders and landing him on the floor. “Balin greet your uncle.”

Balin bowed shallowly then stuck his hand out for Haldr to shake. This, Haldr evidently approved of more than Dwalin’s greedy little fingers. It could have been called a touching moment had Haldr not greeted his nephew with, “Your penmanship was atrocious in your last letter.”

“I wrote it in a carriage!” Balin exclaimed, withdrawing his hand at once and huffing magnificently. 

“I could tell,” Haldr replied, beard twitching _very_ slightly to indicate a smile. “You horrible little trolling.”

Balin marched away and stood behind his father, trying for defiance, but merely looking shy. 

“And my penmanship?” Halldóra asked, drawing close to Haldr for his requisite embrace and kiss on the cheek.

“Flawless as ever,” he admitted, patting her gingerly on the head. “Come along. I’m supping with you - I’ve already placed an order for the food.”

“All your favorites?” Dóra asked teasingly. 

“Of course; you’re visiting on _my_ account, aren’t you?” Haldr asked rhetorically, turning on his heel to lead the way.

Halldóra hardly had time to claim Dwalin back from Náin, who was taking the King and Queen to their own rooms, before Haldr disappeared down a dimly-lit corridor. 

One thing that might be said honestly and without malice about the Iron Hills - it was _dark_. Though the exterior of the range was bathed in the full glory of the sun the interior remained as low-lit as a newly broken-through mine. It was to be expected; the new gate which provided the entryway to Erebor had been put in by Thrór’s father to take advantage of the noontime sun, to provide a more homely appearance for the visiting Men and Elves of Dale and the Greenwood with whom he often had dealings. Indeed, the uppermost stories of the Mountain had been so carved that visitors would be impressed by their grandeur, welcomed by their airiness, and ill-disposed to venture further in the Mountain proper where the light became steadily less bright, the decoration craggier and more intricate by turns, and the eyes of outsiders forbidden to glance. 

But the Iron Hills had no nearby city of Men who regularly had congress with their Lord. And rather than one peak-city, the range was divided into low-lying (to the eyes of an Erebor-born dwarf) hills. Some of the lowliest citizens did not even dwell within the range itself, but rather resided, tucked away in villages in the valleys. Luckily, the rooms for visiting dignitaries were better appointed and convenient to the road, courts, and other amenities that visiting royalty might expect to enjoy.

“Grór couldn’t be arsed to show his face,” Fundin muttered to his wife as they made their way deeper into the rock, paying no close heed to his surroundings. 

Dóra glanced sharply up at him, torchlight glinting off her spectacles. “Hush. We’re not having that; not when we’ve only just come.”

“Gird up,” Fundin advised her. “For we’re headed for much more of - Balin! Take my hand, don’t wander off.”

“I wasn’t wandering,” Balin insisted, though he took his father’s hand anyway. He glanced up and down, eyeing his surroundings with more interest than Fundin, but also more distaste. “It’s gloomy.”

“Balin!” Halldóra admonished. “Hush! That’s quite rude, if you haven’t got a kind word to say - ”

“Then best to say it quietly,” Haldr said, shooting a wry look over his shoulder at them. “Step lively, I’ve cleared my schedule for you, you know.”

“For a whole two hours?” Fundin asked.

“Three,” Haldr said smugly.

Fundin whistled, impressed, and tugged Balin along. It was quite the trek to their rooms; Erebor had a convenient trolley system that ferried dwarves up and down the Mountain, but the Iron Hills, being a more scattered settlement, did not provide such service, at least not to the same degree as Erebor. The royal apartment in Erebor were next to a frequent stop, by design, as were many other dwellings built for dwarves who conducted their business near court. But Haldr had taken rooms nearest the archives and it was there that his family were to stay during their visit. And it was a long walk.

“I thought you’d like the exercise,” he commented idly. “After all your coach-riding.”

“That was only because the outdoors made me sneeze,” Balin said. “Otherwise, I’d have walked all the way - I’d have _ridden_ all the way. On my own pony and all. Oh, is _that_ it?”

“Balin!” both his parents exclaimed together, all thoughts of correcting his fantasies of riding solo for two weeks vanishing in the face of his disapproval of their lodgings. To be sure, their rooms in Erebor were very pretty, with their white marble facades and inlaid goldwork. But the nicely carved slate-grey walls they now faced would serve just as well. It wasn’t as if they were _staying_. 

“But it’s - ” he began, then stopped when Fundin gave him a warning look and squeezed his hand. 

“Enough complaining,” Fundin said sternly. “You’ve not had two kind words together all morning and I’m weary of it. The next thought that comes out of your mouth had best be sweetly said.”

Balin pressed his lips together into an off-kilter frown. Though he said nothing, his face painted a pretty picture. _Is_ this _what we’ve come half-way round the world for? Is this what I’ve been sneezing over? Because it wasn’t worth it._

“Oh, let him grouse,” Haldr said, plucking a key from his belt and handing it to his sister. “It’s not as though _I_ built it.”

“Even so…” Halldóra said, launching into a lecture about how one out to put one’s best foot forward and ought to endeavor to be tolerant and respectful and many other things that Balin was _not_ , a lecture which both Haldr and Balin ignored as they entered their temporary home. 

Dwalin seemed to like it, at least. No sooner had his mother set him on his feet than he set off exploring. Which consisted of running around the room in circles, laughing hysterically. 

“Does he do that often?” Haldr asked, nose wrinkling distastefully.

“All the time,” Fundin said proudly, setting off to chase Dwalin and attempt to stop him before he knocked over something expensive. “He’s a happy lad.”

Haldr grunted and muttered something about how he ought to have put another dwelling between his apartment and theirs, but his sister paid him little mind for it was too late for him to do anything about their situation and he would simply have to live with it. She and Balin took in the rooms more quietly and sedately than did Dwalin and Fundin. The two of them had stalled in the sitting room where Fundin let Dwalin climb onto of a couch and held his hands as he jumped up and down atop the cushion. 

“This is very nice,” Halldóra said approvingly. The flats in the Iron Hills seemed to run sideways rather than straight up and down so they had several rooms that each led into the next, rather than the arrangement in Erebor. “That does very well for a nursery, don’t you think, Balin?”

“It’s alright,” he said, sullen, but determined to obey his father. “The hangings are...fine.”

They were more than ‘fine,’ the walls were hung with scenes of combat, beautifully woven with vibrant red and orange thread, depicting fire and blood, shot through with gold that gave the whole piece a real warmth that made the room cozy. The master suite was similarly tastefully decorated, though the bed would likely not accommodate Fundin’s height. 

Balin hopped on and tested it out. “It’ll do for me, Da can sleep in the other room.”

“That hardly solves the problem - oh, Balin, take your boots off, will you? We’ve not met the servants yet and I’d rather not go into the meeting with their already having a bad impression,” Dóra scolded.

Balin scowled as he got down. “ _Dwalin_ didn’t have to!”

“Dwalin can’t untie his shoes and you can,” his mother pointed out patiently. “Anyway, it’s your _father_ whose got to answer for that and I don’t care what the servants think about _him_. I know for a fact that ours would prefer not to find his dirty stockings in odd places.”

“And they’d like the chance to dust your study once every five-year,” Fundin said, surveying the room with Dwalin tucked, upside-down, in one arm. “Bed’s got to go.”

“That can wait ‘til tomorrow,” Dóra said dismissively. She bent to unlace her own boots and loose the buckles on her coat. “They can’t take it out now, at any rate, for I’m going to use it to have a wee nap.”

“Where am I going to sleep?” Fundin asked, righting Dwalin who tugged at his sleeve and whinged, eager to go back as he was. 

“It’s not that short - ”

“As though you’re any judge,” Fundin scoffed good-naturedly. He handed Dwalin off to his wife and lay down on the bed, boots and all, to prove his point. 

“Da’s got his boots on!” Balin pointed out immediately with an accusing finger.

“Hmm,” Dóra observed, cocking her head to the side. In that instance, it did not trouble her, for Fundin’s boots were well away from touching the blankets. “Perhaps it can’t wait.”

Surprisingly, Fundin did not immediately spring up. “Well, it’s short, but the mattress is well-stuffed. Could do for a wee sleep.”

Dóra grinned. “I thought you’d see it my way,” she said, going round the other side and snuggling up next to Fundin with Dwalin between them. 

“‘Course I would, you’re always right,” he said, turning slightly to face her with a sleepy smile.

Dóra smiled right back, “I am that.”

The kissing that ensued was too much for Balin; he simply hadn’t the strength of character to hold back all his complaints, especially after he’d been so complimentary of the nursery. 

“You’re going to _crush_ Dwalin!” he exclaimed, hopping up into bed, clambering over his father and nearly landing on the baby, who Dóra gathered up into her arms a second before Balin tumbled into bed. 

“Gracious, we can’t have that!” she exclaimed, rolling her eyes over Balin’s head at her husband. “And how sweet of you to care so much about your brother’s welfare. Isn’t that sweet, Dwalin?”

“BAAAAAAAAA!” Dwalin screeched, reaching for Balin, who shrank away into Fundin’s side.

“Shh!” he hushed him angrily. “I’m sleeping!”

“That’s the right idea,” Fundin said, patting his elder son on the head. “Tell Haldr to wake me when the food’s here.”


	49. Chapter 49

They enjoyed a quiet evening in their temporary home. Halldóra and Fundin met the servants (and made a much better impression than they would have if Balin left dirty bootprints on the furniture). Haldr departed with his sister and eldest nephew in tow to look at the library while Fundin and Dwalin were left to their own devices. 

“Fancy a walk?” Fundin asked Dwalin. Though Dwalin wasn’t talking as such, he was a fairly good listener...as long as the individual he was listening to was talking about things he liked. _Want me to chase you, Dwalin? Want a bite to eat, Dwalin? Want a cuddle, Dwalin?_ When, however, approached with things he did not like, Dwalin could be curiously hard of hearing. _Pick up your toys, please, Dwalin? Go down for a nap, Dwalin? Put on your shoes, Dwalin?_

But walks - punctuated by short bursts of running and long stretches of being carried - fell into the category of Things Dwalin Likes and so he jumped up, clapping his hands with great enthusiasm. 

“Good!” Fundin smiled. “Shoes on!”

And wearing shoes fell into the category of Things Dwalin Does NOT Like, so a short battle ensued, which Fundin won, after chasing Dwalin about the sitting room, holding him down while he shrieked so that he could lace his boots and then throwing him up in the air to make him giggle and forget that he was both wearing his shoes and angry at his father. 

By the time the ordeal was over, Fundin was feeling well tuckered out, but Dwalin was excited to go, standing by the door and pointing at the knob he was too short to reach. 

The sounds of the Iron Hills were altogether different from Erebor, owing to different hours kept by the dwarves their and their own family’s situation within the rock. Actually, at home, their own stretch of dwellings was very quiet by dwarrow standards, housing dwarves who kept more or less Mannish hours at court and ate, slept, and worked at the same time. It was early evening in the Iron Hills now, at home that would have meant bursts of laughter from small get-togethers the neighbors were having or occasionally loud curses when a bit of piecework done in a home workshop went awry.

But they were in the heart of the printworks here, where paper was made, books were printed, and the scribes plied their craft on all those volumes and contracts which could not be reproduced upon the presses. There was a low hum of work, the occasional screeching of a crank that wanted replacing, the droning of a dwarf giving out dication. For a few minutes, Fundin occupied himself lifting Dwalin up that he might see through the clear glass windows of a printshop. The dwarves within certainly enjoyed seeing him; every time the great press left a mark upon the paper beneath and was drawn up and away, Dwalin burst into applause.

It lent a bit of a flourish to their work, as the dwarves operating the press (apprentices, likely, who they trusted to roll the ink and turn the crank, but not to set the type) gestured grandly when their work was finished and turned toward the window, expecting Dwalin to be impressed. He did not disappoint, applauding even more enthusiastically now that he was being given a bit of notice. When he started thumping his feet against the windowpane, however, Fundin decided that he’d had enough and made to take him away. 

_Hold!_ one of the dwarves within signed and hurried round to a side door. 

“There you are!” he said, holding out a small, worn inking ball, lacking he customary leather-and-cloth covering. “I’m sure the babe will find some amusement out of it.”

Indeed he did. No sooner did Dwalin take the inking ball in hand than he bonked his father on the nose with it.

“Mightn’t have been the best idea, now I think of it…” the printer said a trifle awkwardly. 

“Nice for him, not so much for me,” Fundin replied woefully. “Give it over, Dwalin, there’s a lad. You can have it back when I’m out of striking range.”

Dwalin did like to share his toys (so long as whoever he was sharing with immediately gave it back once the kindness was paid), so he handed it over without a fuss. Fundin stuffed it in his pocket and swung Dwalin up onto his shoulders to distract him from his new toy.

“Mind he doesn’t hit his head on any low doorways,” the printer advised.

“Always,” Fundin replied, about to take his leave. “Thanks for the token.”

“Of course!” The printer smiled up at him, “Sorry it caused you trouble - especially when you’re having a day out with your grandson.”

Fundin was _so_ taken aback that Dwalin had to start thumping him on the head before he remembered that he had him up on his shoulders and ought to _go_ somewhere.

Grandson. Grandson? _Grandson?_ Oh no. Absolutely not. He was a _young_ dwarf, after all! He wasn’t even in his second century! 

But his beard _was_ looking more grey than black these days. And he did have more than his fair share of scars - though, to be honest, most had been acquired when he was young and stupid rather than… _seasoned_ and wiser in combat. So, it was entirely wrong-headed for the young printer to assume that he was Dwalin’s grandfather based on a few axe-blades that he’d caught with his face when he was seventy.

And, he recalled, the printer wasn’t wearing spectacles. Close work like that could ruin a fellow’s eyes, even an apprentice’s. So, in all likelihood, he’d not gotten a close enough look to _really_ judge Fundin’s age. Just a mistake, was all. And he shouldn’t let it rankle. 

Suddenly preferring the company of dwarves who he knew (and who knew his Name Day), Fundin wandered about a bit before he found his way to the library. It wasn’t so grandly laid-out as Erebor’s own, lacking the ornamentation of stained glass windows depicting dwarves of letters hard at work, but it was nice enough.

“Ugh, I’m starting to think like Balin,” Fundin muttered under his breath. “Shouldn’t set a poor example for the lad.”

“BAAAAAA!” Dwalin shrieked with ear-splitting volume _just_ as Fundin opened the door.

All at once, a dozen pairs of eyes turned on him, gleaming in the torchlight. He’d only set one toe over the threshold when a flint-eyed librarian stood before him. The dwarf’s head only came up to Fundin’s chest, but he stopped in his tracks; the look on his face told Fundin that he meant business.

“I’m afraid we don’t allow children that young in the library,” he said, quietly, but firmly. “If you seek a particular volume, you may leave a request with me and I can have it sent to you or held for you to come back and read at a later time.”

“Oh, no, we’ve not come about a book,” Fundin said hastily. “I’m just looking for my wife.”

The dwarf glanced over his shoulder (looking out for a grey-bearded matron?), but it was only a cursory search at best. “Would you like to leave a message for her? We like to maintain the utmost privacy for our patrons - ”

“Da!”

Balin came running toward Fundin, skidding to a stop before he nearly bowled over the librarian who’d prevented him from entering.

“May I go now, please?” he asked, looking up at his father with pleading eyes. “I’m bored, it’s so dull! And you’ve got to be so _quiet_.”

Balin was being nothing of the sort at the moment, clearly enjoying a moment of protest. 

“Where’s your mother?” Fundin asked, craning his neck as if he’d be able to see through the stacks and locate Halldóra through a combination of luck and intuition. 

“I don’t know, I broke away,” Balin said dismissively. “I was going to double back and find you. Anyhow, they’re only looking at new copies of old books and oohing and aahing over the ink and the letters and I want to go _home._ ”

The way Balin said ‘home’ made his father think he was referring to a place somewhat farther than their rented suite, but he absent-mindedly shushed Balin and said that of course they could be on their way, if he wanted, but he needed to tell his mother he was going. 

Fortunately, their gatekeeper recognized Balin, having been introduced to him when Haldr started them on their tour and so reluctantly allowed Fundin and Dwalin full access to the stacks - for the sole purpose of finding Halldóra and informing her that her eldest son was in his father’s care and not wandering a strange peak all by his lonesome. 

They managed to find Dóra and her brother, the latter droning on about rag paper and its tendency to yellow over time versus...well, versus something else that Fundin did not understand and had no interest in learning about. It looked as if even Dóra was a bit weary of the subject for her eyes lit on Fundin as soon as he came into view and she greeted him warmly. 

“I’ve just come to fetch Balin away,” Fundin informed her. He removed Dwalin from his shoulders and tucked him against his side so he could lean over and whisper, “Before we’re thrown out. Dwalin’s contraband.”

“Oh, never!” she declared, holding her arms out to him. Dwalin went to his mother happily and she covered his face in noisy kisses. 

“You’re _all_ contraband,” Haldr lamented. “So be off with you. Isn’t it their...bedtime, or somesuch?”

Balin was _deeply_ offended that Uncle Haldr thought he and Dwalin went to sleep at the same time and set about telling him so, but Haldr ignored him and instead asked his sister whether she too had seen enough. 

“You’ve done _so_ many improvements and it’s _such_ a wonder how well you’ve recovered the place from the fire - and so quickly! - but it was a long journey and - ”

“Oh, stop,” Haldr rolls his eyes. “If you want to have done, have done. I’ve _always_ got work to attend to.”

“Haven’t we all?” Dóra asked, leaning up to kiss him. Dwalin seemed to think that, since his mother had just given kisses, he ought to do so as well and he reached out for his uncle to grab his face and hold it still to ease his way, but Haldr turned on his heel and stalked away from them all. 

“Glad to see that the years haven’t sweetened Haldr’s disposition,” Fundin observed, dryly. “If he actually wanted to spend time with us, I’d worry there was something off about the water ‘round here.”

“It’s his way,” Dóra said dismissively, getting a tighter hold on Dwalin who was still attempting to wiggle away so that he could give Haldr a good-bye kiss. “Takes all sorts to mine a shaft and all that...anyhow, let’s be off before we’re thrown out, as you said.”

They made their way back to the library’s entrance, quietly as they could, until Fundin turned to his wife and said, “Dwalin made a friend at the printer’s.”

She laughed lightly and said, “He ought to go in for diplomacy, he makes friends every time he leaves his room.”

“Gave him a wee inking ball - no ink, thank the Maker,” Fundin said. Then he paused and added, “Funny thing, actually, the fellow thought - ”

But he stopped when he caught sight of the copper-haired dwarrowdam arguing with a librarian. 

“I made myself quite clear that I was to have a room to _myself_ ,” Dómarra said. She kept her voice down, but the venom in her tone was clear. “Bad enough that you’ve had the constant noise of shifting and building for the last five-year, but children in the library! It’s really the last straw, I might as well absent myself to some rough country if _you_ cannot be prevailed upon to enforce your own policies!”

“Should we greet her?” Fundin mumbled to Dóra, trying valiantly to keep his voice down. It wasn’t so much that he truly felt for Dómarra and her wish to enjoy absolute silence in the library, he’d just rather she didn’t notice him so he wouldn’t _have_ to greet her.

Dóra paused, nibbling on her lip, then shook her head. “Let’s leave it. When she wants to, she’ll see us - anyhow, if she’s already this irate over not getting the room she wants, imagine how much worse off she’ll be if she’s interrupted.”

“I’d rather not, thanks,” Fundin said, gripping Balin firmly by the hand. Fortunately, Dómarra was so caught up in her scolding that she did not notice them sneaking out the door. 

“Now I feel like a coward,” Dóra sighed, glancing back over her shoulder. “I did write her only the day before yesterday - naturally, I didn’t hear back, but she knows we’re coming and if someone _says_ something she’ll feel snubbed - ”

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Fundin pointed out. “Remember, if you tapped her on the shoulder, she’d only be annoyed that you were putting her off work. And if she finds out we were in the library same as her and just wandered on past - hang it, we’ll just say we didn’t see her. If we’re asked. But we likely won’t be.”

“Hmm,” Dóra hummed distractedly. She paused in her step and looked over her shoulder again. “I could just pop back in - ”

“If she’d wanted to see us, she might’ve greeted us,” Fundin reminded her, putting a hand on her shoulder and guiding her forward. “Haldr arsed himself to do _that_ , at least. And he’s a misan...misan...oh, what’s that you call him?”

“Misanthrope, Da,” Balin informed him, swinging his arm in his father’s grip absently. “It means he doesn’t like other folk and puts them off on purpose. _Who_ was it we’re supposed to see? Because if they’re back in the library, I’d rather not. I’m tired of being polite when there’s nothing to be polite about.”

“You know, lad,” Fundin said. “I know we tease Uncle Haldr, but you can be a bit misanthropish yourself.”

“Misanthropic,” Dóra corrected him immediately.

“Runs in the family,” Fundin muttered. Then, more loudly, said, “Let’s turn in. It’s been a long day.”

“It is _not_ my - ” Balin began, but his father interrupted him.

“Bedtime, aye,” Fundin agreed. “But it is _mine_.”

They returned to their rooms, gave both lads a well-deserved washing-up and Balin decided afterward that while it was definitely not his bed _time_ , he had no objection to getting into the bed and being read to for a bit. There was a thoughtful pile of children’s books that had been thoughtfully cultivated for his amusement.

“I haven’t read this one!” he declared as he chose one off the top of the stack. “Nor this one! Ooh, and I _think_ I might’ve read this one only the pictures are different. Ama! Ama, read to me!”

“Did you hear something just now?” Dóra asked Fundin as she prepared Dwalin for his cot. 

Fundin swiveled his head around, peering here and there about the room - pointedly everywhere _except_ to the place where Balin was. “Hmm. Thought so, but then...might’ve been the pipes creaking, mightn’t it?”

“Oh, aye,” Dóra agreed readily. “Odd how I thought they were calling for me. Sounded almost like Balin, didn’t it?”

“Just like!” Fundin snapped his fingers as if coming to a sudden revelation. “Couldn’t have been, though. Nah, not our Balin. Not _our_ lad who’d shout for his Ama to fetch for him like she was apprenticed to him. Not our boy.”

“Never,” Halldóra smiled up at her husband.

“PLEASE AMA WILL YOU READ TO ME?” Balin asked, mouth turning down into a little pout. “You might’ve just _said._ ”

“No, I don’t think so,” Dóra replied pleasantly. “Not when you’re a big lad who can remember for himself. Now, what is it you’d like to read, dearest?”

The term dearest seemed to mollify Balin slightly (at least his parents remember that he was dear) and he settled for the first book on the pile. 

“Once upon a time - ” Dóra began, but before she’d truly got going there was a hammering knocking at the door that made both she and Balin jump. Dwalin followed suit a moment later, pulling himself up to stand in his cot and wailing over sleep interrupted.

Fundin was the first to the door and no sooner had the racket of doorknocking ceased than Fundin increased the overall volume in the suite shouting, “DWALIN WAS _SLEEPING_! WHAT ARE YOU ABOUT?”

To which a voice that could only belong to his sister replied, “I’M MOUNTING A HORSE AND LEAVING, I WONDERED IF YOU WANTED TO COME ALONG.”

Getting either of the children to bed now seemed a lost cause. Balin bolted out to the sitting room and Dóra picked up Dwalin and held him on her hip, bouncing him a bit. He could be quite the little bear when he was awakened from slumber unexpectedly, and he howled in her ear despite her best efforts to calm him. 

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” Fundin demanded; he was no longer angry, but shouting tended to be the standard conversational volume when he was with his brother and sister. 

Dísa then launched into quite the speech about how they’d been in this ruddy range for nearly a full ruddy day and she hadn’t seen his ruddy lordship about not _once_ , and what sort of ruddy greeting was _that_? Only she didn’t use the word ‘ruddy’ and Balin was in there soaking up more choice vocabulary than he could have gotten from a week in the library, his mother was sure.

Rather than insert herself into the conversation - or the inevitable consequences of riding out on an arranged visit after less than a _day_ , Dóra closed the nursery door and carried Dwalin into her own bedroom. 

“I’m going to give you a spot of advice, sweetling,” she said in a soothing, sing-song manner to a not-quite-shouting-not-quite-snuffling Dwalin. “This family of yours likes to bluster about a great deal. Which is all well and good. But in the future, I hope that if you’re of a mind to bluster, you try to do it well away from sleeping babes.”

Dwalin burrowed his red, wet face into his mother’s shoulder, pulled her hair and hiccupped into her dressing gown. And perhaps she’d been too long acquainted with the royal family and perhaps Dwalin had more of their blood than her own in him, but as their ears were still assailed by muffled shouting and Balin’s piping observations, mother and son fell fast asleep.


	50. Chapter 50

Fundin fumbled about in the wine chest looking for something to tempt his sister - a habitual whiskey drinker. Fortunately, Haldr having seen to the arrangement, there were an equal number of bottles containing amber-colored liquid as there were red wines. And even a bottle of rum, if Fundin’s eyes did not mistake him, which he made note of in case Dísa planned to make it a habit of hers to come tromping into their quarters at all hours, raising a fuss and waking the baby.

Thus armed, Fundin poured his sister a tumblerful of whiskey which she downed in two long swallows - Balin’s mouth fell open in impressed shock and it occurred to Fundin that a good father would have sent his son toddling off to bed rather than allow him to bear witness to all this railing against Grór...but sometimes one had to pick one’s battles. And at the moment it seemed more prudent to be a good brother rather than a good father. So Fundin refilled his sister’s cup and let her go on, at length. 

“ _Fuck_ Grór,” she growled, only tossing back half her allotment this time, clutching the glass so hard in her fist that Fundin thought about taking it away, lest it shatter. “He’s a whinging, spineless, pathetic wee coward and if it wasn’t in bad _taste_ I’d follow the example of our ancestors, storm his range, take his gold, and put Balin on his throne - ”

“Dísa!” Fundin thundered, clapping his hands over Balin’s ears. A bit of bad language might be excused as building his vocabulary, but treason was an entirely different matter. “Come along, you don’t mean it. You adore Náin in the first place, and don’t deny it. And in the _second_ , more talk like that and I’ll have to arrest you.”

His sister snorted and finished her second whiskey. “You can _try_ , you mean.”

Silence stretched, thick and black between them. Balin was uncharacteristically silent, looking between his father and his aunt with apprehension and not even attempting to wiggle his head from between Fudin’s hands. In fact, he reached up and held on to his father’s wrists as if to steady himself. 

Dísa laughed and shook her head. “You’re all of you too grim-faced and word-minded - I blame your wife entirely. If I was going to oust Grór I’d have done it, wouldn’t I? And you don’t see his head on a pike, do you?”

“You shouldn’t say such things,” Fundin scolded her half-heartedly. He let Balin go, but didn’t hurry him along to bed. His sister was like a raging storm; she just needed to blow herself out. And, if he was honest with himself, she’d always exercised remarkable restraint where he was concerned; Fundin never knew her to raise a hand to him, despite her loathing. After pouring his sister a third drink and himself a first one, he settled down on an armchair and allowed Balin to sit in his lap while Dísa sat across from him. “Don’t forget, we’ve got to make merry with him, his wife, and his son tomorrow eve.”

“How could I forget?” she rolled her eyes. “We’re not like to _see_ him before tomorrow eve, I’m sure he’ll make a grand effect, his coming in. Comport himself like King under the rock and we his faithful supplicants - for _we_ have always got to come to _him_ , haven’t we? And never the other way round.”

“You like travel,” Fundin said, as if to remind her.

Dísa snorted, “I like travel when I dictate where I’m going. I like travel when there’s a mountain to conquer or a river to navigate or a boar to spear.”

“I’m sure someone’ll organize a hunt for you - nay, I’m sure Náin already has done and is holding back to surprise you,” he mused. “Just be sure you look surprised. And say ‘thank you.’”

“I know how I ought to act,” Dísa grumbled, jaw set in a hard line with a fierce look about her that Fundin generally associated with the heat and pitch of battle. “And I know how I _should_ act. You don’t remember, do you? All the moving about after Dáin fell, but I do. Your thrice-damned mother-in-law was among them.”

Balin perked up just then and Fundin put his head back and groaned, raking his fingers through his hair in exasperation. “Dísa. Enough.”

“She’s a whinging, spineless, selfish - ”

“Ey!” Fundin exclaimed sharply, nearly dislodging Balin as he sat upright. “That’s _enough_. I mean it. Stop.”

Either out of respect for her brother’s wishes as a father or because she knew he was the keeper of the whiskey and could decide to cut her off at any time, Dísa heeded him, at least on the subject of Dómarra. 

“Her and hundreds like her,” Dísa huffed, eyeing her dwindling drink contemplatively. “We’re surrounded by ‘em.”

“They were lean years,” Fundin replied reasonably. Balin was bored of their conversation now that his grandmother was no longer at the center of it and busied himself trying to steal Fundin’s whiskey glass; his father took all the fun out of it. “Try it, if you want, but I can tell you, you won’t like it.”

Balin only had to smell it before his nose wrinkled and he shook his head in the negative, sliding off his father’s lap. “I’m going to bed,” he announced, still slightly wary. “‘Night Da. ‘Night, Auntie.”

“‘Night,” Dísa replied tightly. Then, just as soon as Balin shut his bedroom door said, “He’s got a right to know his umad’s nasty piece of shite.”

“He’ll find out on his own, he’s a bright lad, he’ll figure it out,” Fundin replied evenly. He refilled both their glasses and slumped down, rubbing his eyes; it had been a long day, even for him. “Anyhow, if folk decided they thought better of the Iron Hills than they did of the Lonely Mountain, they’re likely kicking themselves now. We’re richer, better defended, better positioned for trade...we’ve flourished. They’ve carried on.”

“Aye, but they’re still here,” she said. “Biding their time. Just so smug and sure that we’ll fall. That Thrór’s going to fuck it all up and take us all with him.”

Fundin drank and said nothing. What more could be said? He supposed Dísa was right to be annoyed at their kindred’s lack of faith in their King, but what of it? At the end of the day, theirs would be the more prosperous kingdom and those who’d thrown their lot in with Grór would have nothing to show for their doubts. But he’d only been a child when his brother-in-law was crowned and, honestly, it wasn’t as though Thrór sought _his_ counsel at the time.

And one did not need to be a member of the royal family to know the history. The Iron Hills was being ruled over by a cousin of King Dáin, childless, unmarried, without a sister to bear in his stead. He would have had to name an heir of his relations and many assumed that, when the time came, Frór would be called upon. That was the rumor anyway, that the second son - the most intelligent, Thrór would be the first to admit - would become Lord of the Iron Hills. It would be a boon, two brothers, close in affection (if not in temperament) ruling neighboring kingdoms.

But Frór had fallen with his father. And Grór had gone East. Gone before reaching his majority, before he could even swear an oath of fealty. There was nothing so terrible in all of that. After all, _someone_ had to rule the Iron Hills, didn’t they?

But Grór had not gone alone. Scores had followed him, abandoning the kingdom and a King they thought had ascended the throne too quickly, too unprepared. Thrór was known to be kind, generous, and large-hearted, but he was also reputed to be thick-headed, gravel-brained, and unlearned. Lucky in combat, not skilled. Friendly in diplomacy, not wise. 

In the intervening years, Erebor had prospered. Her military might was unmatched, her wealth only increased. The Iron Hills, while hardly impoverished, was a pale shade in comparison. Still, very few of the original immigrants had moved back. And it was widely known that relations between the brothers were hardly warm. 

“Grór encourages it,” Dísa declared.

“You don’t know that,” Fundin countered. “When was the last time you heard him at court?”

“Can’t stand the sound of his prating, whinging - ”

“Aye, well, there you are,” Fundin interrupted her. “So why assume the worst?”

The look she gave him would have terrified a less hearty dwarf into gibbering apologies and vows to keep their tongue in their mouth the next time they were of a mind to contradict her Majesty. But Fundin just stared back, uncowed.

It wasn’t that he was in the habit of defending Grór in general, only with his sister in particular. Let her complain all she liked when no one was in earshot, or better yet, let her work her rage out on a practice dummy or (best of all) a boar or elk that wasn’t quick enough or clever enough to evade her. In that latter instance, Fundin got to reap the benefits of her ill humor. 

But here, in Grór’s own halls, she _had_ to hold her tongue. It would be inhospitable in the extreme for the subjects of the Iron Hills to know that Erebor’s Queen so openly criticized their Lord in public. It was the least she could do, for it was far too late to pretend that the subjects of the Iron Hills had no notion of Dísa’s overall animosity. She was too aggressive in her dislike for them to imagine anything else. 

Even he’d suffered a slip of the tongue immediately after their arrival, but Dóra rightly took him to task for it. Too bad she was asleep (or pretending to be); he’d have liked a second in this battle. 

“Could be you’d have a better opinion of the place and its Lord if you spent more time here,” Fundin changed tactics, trying for teasing now. “Don’t forget, you were nearly its Captain of the Guard.”

“Ha,” Dísa snorted. “Don’t make it more than it was. I was to be sent here for punishment, not for glory.”

Fundin took a drink; he didn’t really have anything to say to that. He couldn’t imagine Balin or Dwalin proving so difficult to manage that he would think the job could be better done by someone else. But then, both of his lads were small still and...well, biddable to a point. If not, he could always haul them up by their ankles and get them to where they needed to be; Dísa had been taller than their father by the time she was sixty, or so he’d heard. 

“Right…” he said and, ordinarily, that would be the end of it. But something made him ask. Perhaps it was the desire to get his sister off the topic of her brother-in-law. Perhaps it was his wife’s influence (she was forever lamenting the fact that no one in his family _talked_ ). Or perhaps he was simply tired and on his way toward becoming drunk. “What made him change his mind?”

“Oh, damned if I know,” Dísa replied. “It happened...I don’t remember, it was ages ago...a week afterward? He said I ought to pack my bags, but before the caravan got on the roadway, he said I should unpack them and that was that.”

“But you did...pack,” Fundin pressed. “You were ready to leave? I don’t remember that.” 

“‘Course you didn’t, you were Dwalin’s age,” she waved her hand carelessly. “And it wasn’t any of your business, was it? He changed his mind. Or he took so much shite from his fellows at arms, that he thought he ought to gird up and raise his own child, nevermind what a monster I was. Turned out alright, though, eh?”

Fundin’s brows went up at that. A monster? His sister? Nah, she was a legend, before she turned one-hundred, she’d nearly hunted all the beasts worth eating out of the surrounding fields and forests to feed the Mountain. “That bad, was it?”

“I got into fights,” she said simply. “Wasn’t my fault the ones I fought with couldn’t put up much of a defense. ‘Least, that was my excuse. Broke a few arms, battered a few noses, knocked a few down cold on the floor. Da didn’t like it, made him look weak, I suppose - or he thought he did. And he didn’t like that, not in the least. But I’d always done. Anyhow, by _then_ he ought to have reckoned that I was only good for killing, I’d done with school and showed no promise for anything else. S’what I was Made to do and I’m damned good at it.”

“Aye,” Fundin agreed, raising his glass to her. “But there’s value in knowing when to strike down an Orc and when to lay flat a fellow dwarf, you know.”

“Some dwarves need laying flat,” she replied grimly. “I had a nasty temper - fuck it, I still have. Only it takes longer now to get me riled.”

 _Does it?_ Fundin wanted to ask, but held his tongue. He’d certainly seen his sister get her hackles up, snapping at Gróin, even Thrór, on occassion, though the latter took it in much better humor than the former. But he’d never _actually_ seen her in the thick of battle, she’d changed her affiliation from the King’s Guard to the Mountain Guard by the time he was old enough to wage war. He’d seen her hunt, but while his sister took pride in her skill at killing, she never seemed to derive much pleasure from it, indeed, she was known for being almost freakishly fond of animals. 

So, while he might have seen her at her best, it was entirely possible that he’d not seen her at her worst. It couldn’t be all _that_ terrible, he reasoned. He’d time enough and wounds enough to be quite confident he’d seen most of the vile reality of the world. How bad could the wrath of one dwarf truly be?

But he didn’t ask for clarification. And didn’t ask, what specifically she’d done that her father was so keen to have her sent away.

“What did Ama think of the scheme?” Fundin asked. “She might’ve talked him out of it.”

At first, she only stared. Then laughed in his face.

“Ama?” she asked incredulously. “Our mother? The one who birthed us all? She was glad to be rid of me! Or I remember as much. We never got on, she and I, not at all, you know that. She was a _Healer_ , remember. The Maker formed us out of different materials and worked us for different tasks.”

“She married a Guardsman - ” 

“Aye, so she did,” Dísa agreed. “And you married a scribe. And don’t pretend to me that you see the value in sticking your nose in a book all day. Two souls can find content with each other, but it doesn’t mean they’re formed for one purpose, does it? And don’t tell me you’d _understand_ if Balin or Dwalin took up scribing to the exclusion of all else.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Fundin countered. “But I wouldn’t despise them for it, that’s not reasonable.”

“Well, sometimes Ma wasn’t reasonable,” she said. Dísa lay aside her glass and stood; evidently the conversation was over. “What’s got you talking so much?”

“Just...curious,” he said, rising to walk her to the door. 

“Must’ve picked that up from your wife,” she shook her head in bemused wonder. “You never used to ask so many questions about them before you married her.”

Fundin supposed not, but he pointed out the talking seemed to have done her some good - unless she was planning on making a great escape on her own.

“Nah,” Dísa shook her head. “Not now - I’ll not say never. Depends on how Grór receives us tomorrow. Or today. What time is it? Nevermind. I’m off to bed. Tell Haldr I appreciate the whiskey. ‘Night, lad.”

“‘Night,” Fundin bade her farewell, but did not immediately join his wife in bed. He felt strangely alert, the same sort of disquiet he felt the night before a great battle was due. A bit of excitement tinged with dread.

When he finally went up to bed - removing a sleeping Dwalin to the nursery - he woke Dóra in the process who, like his sister, asked the time.

“Still late,” he said, pulling her close. “Go back to sleep. We’ve a great fight in store tomorrow, I only hope it gets started _after_ the feast.”

“Mmm,” she mumbled sleepily. “I’ll bring my sabre. And if I’m quick, we can probably tuck some rolls in my purse, if we need to retreat.”

Although he was half-asleep, Fundin was able to summon a bit of bluster. “I don’t retreat.”

“Not yet,” she agreed, nuzzling into his chest. “Only some fights can’t be won, just endured.”


End file.
